greynolds17

alright so I was replacing my ball joints and steering knuckle and hammered the hub pretty hard to remove it...now I get a grinding noise when turning right and have all the symptoms of a wheel bearing failure or a bearing that's loose in the hub. Is this because of how I hammered it off? or was it getting ready to go and that was the final push? I have done wheel studs before and used an air hammer to press them in but noticed no play at all after that. I have quite the amount of play on the drivers side and an ever so small amount I think on the passenger side. I noticed a bunch of dirt in the area but it appeared that the bearing seal was fine...the bearing itself doesn't seem to make noise, I assume the noise I'm getting is from the rotor contacting the pads when it moves.

gat

The bearing won't affect the rotor touching the pads. That pads are encapsulated around the rotor. That system would stay as is with or without connection to the wheel bearing.
Just replace the bearings. They are cheap. You can use a slide hammer with a flanged tip to remove them and you can use a pipe to install the new ones on to the axles.

greynolds17

You must be thinking of a different bearing than me...I'm talking about the front hub bearings or the hub themselves.

gat

For some reason I was thinking of the rear. I try to separate my usage of wheel and axle bearing, but clearly I failed to do that in my confusion as well.

Dave51

Check the backing plate to make sure you didn't bend it so it now touches the rotor.

U-joints are still good?

PatHenry

Agree with Dave - definitely check the u-joints (which should be easy if you're removing the hub bearing).

You should always use the deep socket (or bolt) and power steering trick to pop out a stubborn hub bearing. I'm always hesitant to strike bearings with a hammer, but it's probably more the abnormal articulations/disturbing the area that exposed an issue that was already on the verge of exposing itself.