Subaru rear wheel bearing

Maintenance/Repairs
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I replaced the rear wheel bearings/hub assemblies in my 2014 Subaru Legacy with 112k miles today. I was thinking of the poster here a few months ago who had so much trouble with them on his 2015 Forrester so I went on YouTube and found a video of replacing the rear hubs on a 2013 Outback which is essentially the same. 2012-2014 Outback’s and Legacy’s all share the same chassis and almost all the suspension parts. Only the steering knuckles are different between the Outback and the Legacy.

The guy in the video does these for A1 Auto Parts. Nice garage. I’m doing mine on a gravel driveway under a maple tree in 90 degree 70% humidity. He had a lot of trouble getting one off, he used a BFH, torch, air chisel and eventually got it off, but he had to completely disassemble the rear parking brakes.

I just loosened the four bolts, then using just the 6" extension and 14mm socket, I tightened them to snug. Then I used the hole for the ball detent at the top of the extension as a guide, I backed them off exactly one turn, thenI hit the end of the extension with a 1# dead blow hammer on two of the bolts opposite from each other. Then I turned the bolts in to see if they were still loose. They weren’t which meant the hub had moved so I repeated. After the third round, the hub was loose.

The backing plate came off with the hub so I had to hold it while I hit the back of the hub with the dead blow hammer to knock the hub out of the backing plate.

There was a lot of rust between the hub and the steering knuckle. The rear has steering knuckles because it has an independent suspension. The rear wheels don’t steer. Anyway, cleaned it out with emory cloth and scotch brite, lubed and put in new hubs.

Tomorrow I’m going to have to remove the right rear wheel and brake caliper to look into the parking brake. I noticed it wasn’t working when I was torquing the wheels. I think when I knocked the hub out of the backing plate, I may have inadvertently knocked the brake cable loose from the brake lever.

1 Like
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You are doing the work carefully and thoughtfully. Good luck and please let us know how it goes. Many post here about Subaru rear wheel bearings.

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The job is a bit easier when the mechanic knows what he’s doing! A little “mechanical empathy” maybe?

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Maybe a little since I had my own “delta sierra” out there as I finished up. Instead of torquing the wheels on hte ground as I usually do, I just pushed the button to set the parking brake (electronic parking brake). No problem on the drivers side but as I went to final torque on the passengers side, the wheel rotated about a 1/4" and hit a stop. When I released the pressure on the torque wrench, it sprung back.

So I double check the drivers side, it didn’t do that. Back at the passenger side and it still did it. I put on the breaker bar to test the “remove direction” and it did not move. It was getting late, I was tired and hungry so I left the car up on the jack stands and put the rest of my tools and jack away.

I’m thinking that maybe when the hub came out through the brake pads that maybe it unhooked the brake cable. So this morning I tear down to the parking brake and inspect, everything is normal. There is no self adjust in this parking brake so I adjust the brake, it was only a couple notches off so it really should not have been the problem. I put it all back together and nothing changed.

I told my neighbor about it, he is a mechanic and he was stumped. So he came over and I showed him what the passenger side was doing. He asked if I was sure the drivers side wasn’t doing the same thing so I started to show him when it hit me, dumb s(ierra). We both laughed.