| Jack up the car and remove a front wheel. Remove the grease cap using
a couple of screw drivers as shown.
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| Remove the brake caliper. It is recommended to disconnect the brake
line (I didn't). Remove the two retaining clips - small u-shaped
pieces on the right side of the opening for the brake pads. Push the
2 pins out which hold the spring clip. The clip is now loose. Remove
the two brake pads. There are two bolts holding the caliper on the
axle assembly. You should now be able to remove the caliper from
around the brake disk.
Loosen the Allen bolt in the wheel bearing clamp nut, unscrew the nut
and remove the thrust washer.
Remove the wheel hub with brake disk and bearings.
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| Here is the axle after the hub was removed and before any cleanup.
You can see the mounting holes for the brake caliper on the right
side of the picture with the caliper itself moved off to the right.
|
| This is the inner side of the disk brake and hub assembly before the
inner seal was removed. You can grab the seal with a pair of pliers
and man-handle it out of the hub. Remove both sets of bearings.
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| Clean up the races well enough to inspect the surfaces. I determined
that the smaller race should be replaced. To remove the races,
factory recommends a press and special tools, VW 407, VW 418, VW 447f,
a spacer and VW 401. The spacer is a tube 100 mm O.D., 90 mm I.D. and
35 mm long.
I don't have any of these tools.
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| Mark the disk brake and hub so you can reassemble them correctly and
remove the disk from the hub.
I found that the back side of a large socket (1 1/16 in) would fit
through the hub and rest on the edge of the race. The plan was to tap
it out using the socket. A 1/2 in extension put into the socket
provided a way to extend the socket out the hub enough to provide a
surface to tap.
The hub must be heated before trying to remove the race. The recommend
temperature is 120-150 deg. C. (250-300 deg F). I put the hub in a
pressure cooker pan covered with water and brought the water to a
boil. This only brings the hub to 100 deg. C, but that proved to be
hot enough.
The hub must be hot before putting in the new race. I was able to
replace it without re-heating by immediately taping the new race into
its cavity flush with a mallet and then used a small punch to fully
seat the race by tapping it a little on all sides, a bit at a time.
If you need to remove the larger race, I really don't have any
suggestions other than professional help. My technique would not work
here which is unfortunate, because it is not a good idea to use an old
race with a new bearing.
Re-mount the brake disk on the hub using your marks to place them in
their original orientations. The bolts should be torqued to 16.6
ft-lbs. Replace the bolts using their original orientation with the
nuts on the same side of the hub as the lug nuts.
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| I used Swepco Moly grease to pack new the bearings before placing them
in the hub. This is some grease left over from the C-V joints. Is this
grease appropriate for wheel bearings?
According to the
manufacturer the answer is yes and it has the NLG1 GC-LB rating,
however high temperature Lithium grease is commonly recommended for
this application.
Put extra grease in the hub between the bearings. Force grease into
the bearings with your fingers.
It is gooey.
Put a new oil seal. You can lightly tap the seal into place by slowly
tapping with a small hammer. The factory recommends one of the VW tools
and the press for this operation.
Fill the space between the oil seal and the bearing with grease.
Slide the hub onto the spindle, replace the thrust washer and the nut.
Tighten the nut enough to seat the bearings, then loosen it to the
point that the thrust washer can be moved sideways under light pressure
with a screwdriver.
Tighten the Allen bold to 18 ft-lb. Recheck the tightness of the
thrust washer.
Replace the dust cap.
Reassemble the break caliper. The mounting bolts should be torqued to
50 ft-lbs.
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