Wheel Bearings & Tie-Rod Ends
Yesterday the weather people were calling for nice weather, so I decided to tackle installing the new wheel bearings and tie rod ends. The day before was a wash out (literally), so I got up early on Saturday to attempt to finish at a reasonable time.
I started around 8:00 AM, and was done cleaning up by 1:00 PM. It wasn’t bad considering two of those hours were spent waiting for the machine shop to press the old bearings out and the new ones in. The only thing that went wrong is that one of the tie rod end nuts will not thread back on. Somehow the nut was damaged, so I’ll order one (along with a few other parts) from Nissan on Monday.
As I expected, the Harbor Freight tie rod separator did more harm then good. Luckily I only had to use it on the old tie rod ends, which I was replacing anyway. If you are considering using one of these, make sure you prepare for the worst, or look for an alternative.
I also discovered a few things during the instllation that I want to address:
- Ball Joints are torn. I am going to look into Moog ones, instead of buying new control arms.
- I want to clean up and paint the knuckles. They have some surface rust and generally look like crap.