Disassembled my first front wheel bearing today on my daily driver 03 OB H6 Sedan and the surface inside the knuckle look like this.

 

I assume this means the knuckle is trash? I placed an orange box around the marred surface in one of the photos.

 

That sounds about right since I have no spare knuckles for this

 

Weird this thing didn't exhibit any wheel bearing signs at all - excellent gas mileage (27mpg) and drove great. Not until I pulled the axle for a CV boot did I notice a lumpy-ness to the wheel bearings so I decided to do this.

 

 

Edited December 24, 20205 yr by idosubaru

That would be the outer race of the bearing. If you look close, you'll see the snap ring retainer that sits in a groove just above that surface you're talking about. The new bearing race gets pressed back into the knuckle and the snap ring back into place.

That would be the outer race of the bearing. If you look close, you'll see the snap ring retainer that sits in a groove just above that surface you're talking about. The new bearing race gets pressed back into the knuckle and the snap ring back into place.

 

got it, awesome.

Hi Gary. That's funny, my outer race had gouges just like that in the exact same spot. I spent a little while trying to figure out how the heck the new bearing was going to fit in there until I realized that was actually the outer race of the bearing and had to be driven out.

 

I think you said you have the HF front wheel bearing adapters, there is one that will fit right in there perfectly. It needs to fit just inside that outer ring there that is machined into the bearing housing. I wasn't looking at it closely and I used one that was too large and was actually trying to drive out that machined in ring. Needless to say, and fortunately, it did not budge, and I double checked before I put a pipe on the breaker bar.