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I just got the good and bad news from the loack mechanic today that the noise we had emminating from the back is wheel bearings, rather than teh diff that we though was on its way out.

As he can not do it until next week, I will attempt to replace the bearings. As I am use to L Series this is a new adventure. I have to drive to Sydney tomorrow hence I need the vehicle and it is too risky to use it with that much noise, something will lock up for sure at the wrong moment.

Can & should I try to leave the hub in the vehicle to replace the bearings, or remove the hub and get the mechanic to press the bearings in and out of the hub on the bench ?????

Any tips appreciated.

It is a Forester 2000, manual 5 speed, 2lt model.

Id remove the hub and do it on a bench and get the mechanic to press the bearings out/in. Will save much heartache in the long run.

Thanks for that - Am I likely to need anything special to remove the hub ? Got plenty of spanners & levers.

All done !

It was not as onerous as I first thought. I removed the hub and had the local mechanic press the old bearing out and put the new ones in.

I was surprised to see that there were two braking systems in the rear, disks for braking, hub brakes for the parking brake. Why not just have disk parking brakes like the L series had on the front ?

Hub brakes might be due to more reliability and the fact it won't need your car to have good disks for the parking brake to still work?

Just speculating.

penguin wrote:All done !

It was not as onerous as I first thought. I removed the hub and had the local mechanic press the old bearing out and put the new ones in.

Good to hear