rear wheel bearing, easy peasy

M

mabo

Club Member
Nov 13, 2011
5,365
5,007
south wales
Ever since I bought my cougar I've been aware of a rumbling wheel bearing. I jacked her up recently and diagnosed near side rear, an ebay search led me to buy a complete new complete hub with bearings for a measly £32, posted.
Last friday decided to "start" fitting it. In less than an hour all done.
Wheel off, 2 bolts caliper off, disc straight off studs, dust cap drifted off, 1 large nut removed, hub off, new hub on, angle grind the edges of the disc to remove the small rust lip, refit disc, refit calper, pump up brake pedal, tug hand brake a few times to settle everything back, refit wheel.
I have to admit I haven't driven her yet, will do tomorrow, but I've got to hand it to Ford engineers in minimising workshop time, on this occasion at least ! :)
I have to admit I was lucky enough to have all the right size star drive and sockets to hand and the key for the locking wheel nut was in the boot, something I've been wondering about for a while.
 
Trust me when I say that'll probably be the easiest job you'll do on it lol. Sounds like you struck lucky with the caliper bolts as they're usually a nightmare.
 
Maybe, gave her an oil change today. Ratchet spanner on the drain plug. Turns out the ratchet hits the exhaust just as the threads end and the plug is trapped by the spanner, can't screw the plug back in because its a ratchet spanner ! curses. Eventually applied pressure to the down pipe with a crow bar and was able to remove the plug and the spanner together. And then commenced battle to remove the filter.....Still job done now with Good old GTX oil and a FOMOCO filter. We are going due to a posh afternoon party tomorrow and I'm hoping she'll turn a few heads, perhaps people will like my car too !
Next job will be to check out the alty belt tensioner which I think is shoooshing away nicely, so much so that the lights pulse up and down in accompaniment.
 
I just got 12lts of magnatec for 50 quid (to do the cat and the Mazda), normally use Ford oil but it was 2 expensive this time - never even thought about using GTX as I didnt realise it was a semi synth
 
ggsumo said:
I just got 12lts of magnatec for 50 quid (to do the cat and the Mazda), normally use Ford oil but it was 2 expensive this time - never even thought about using GTX as I didnt realise it was a semi synth
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Well if it's semi Synth it certainly doesn't say so on the packaging, I guess it's safe to say it isn't. I'm presuming the only problem with a mineral oil will be shorter life for the oil which will mean I'll have to change it sooner ? Can these engines run fully synth ?
 
You should be using fully synthetic 5W 30, as above look on eBay for ford formula F, you'll want 6 litres
 
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spjmorris said:
You should be using fully synthetic 5W 30, as above look on eBay for ford formula F, you'll want 6 litres
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If i remember rightly the Ford oil was Semi Synth until recently - so the original spec for the car was Semi. But I have run with Magnatex twice before with no problem. The spec on the GTX is A1 and its a semi synth so maybe oK - but i'm sure somebody will know for definite as I do know the V6's are temperamental about what oil goes in.
 
Moving away from the rights and wrongs of the oil I fitted.... Tonight I checked out the alternator belt tensioner, from info on here and a "shooshing" noise from the belt I suspected the tensioner bearing was shot. The tensioner came off fairly easily but once it was off I couldn't detect much play in the bearing, thought hell hope it's not the alternator, fumbling around to give it a spin I found it was good, but the jockey pulley directly above the alternator had loads of play. Pulled this off easily and even managed to drift the bearing out of the pulley. Tomorrow I'll check out my local bearing supplier taking the old one as a sample to see if I can get another. Fingers crossed.
 
Got me a new bearing, should be able to fit it tonight and get it back on the car but I'll save the tensioner til the weekend when I've got more time.
Is it as easy as... fit tensioner in place, fit centre bolt, tension with 1/4 drive, tighten centre bolt and then enjoy the silence of my new bearing.
Or is there some trick I should be aware of ? Advice welcome.
Thanks in anticipation, mabo.
 
The tensioner works on a spring mechanism..no adjustment is required or possible.
Fit tensioner.
Fit idler with new bearing.
Use 3/8 knuckle bar in the square hole in the tensioner to allow belt to be fitted.
Make sure belt is sat correctly on all the wheels.
Finito ;-)
 
Thanks Dogsbody, found that out, job now 100% and no more wooshing sound. It was a bit of a swine to get back together, it's like working through a letter box. I kept dropping things and then wasting time rumaging around on the sub frame to retrieve them, nothing actually landed on the floor. At one point I managed to drop the star bit for the tensioner bolt behind / under the head light and thought I was going to have to pull that out to get it back!
 
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