ROMAD

This is the result of my 12 hour wheel bearing, race rotor and pads replacement saga from last Friday. It was a very painful experience and I hope to help save another 2nd gen 2wd 4Runner owner some pain.

If you have a 4wd then this is of little use to you and it may not be worth reading

My 1995 SR5 2wd 4Runner was in need of some front end attention with 110K on the odometer. I decided to just go ahead and replace all the bearings and races along with new rotors and pads as long as I was tearing things down that far - everything was close to needing replacement and I plan on keeping her for 200K + so I felt it was a worthwhile investment.

I pre-purchased all new Timken bearings, races and Morse ceramic pads from Autozone. I pre-purchased Brembo rotors from Taylor Automotive. I had Good Friday off from work so I decided to tear down the front end and replace all the parts. It should have been a simple and easy job but it wasn't - everything went wrong. I am writing all this down to help out someone else from making my mistakes.

I read the Haynes manual for my 4Runner on wheel bearing replacement and it turned out to be all wrong - it described a typical 2wd spindle with a dust cap, castle nut and cotter pin set up. My front end was not like this at all! I had a bolt on dust cover, a 54mm locking nut, a star washer, a 54mm nut and a thrust washer instead. Only problem was I didn't have a 54mm socket nor did I even know what size I needed - Haynes didn't mention this at all. I managed to get things apart with a pair of channel locks though.

All the bearings,races and grease seals Autozone sold me ahead of time were wrong - they sold me set3 and set5 bearings for a 95 4Runner 2wd and this is not the right parts for my 4Runner It took me several hours of phone calls and multiple trips to many Autozones to gather up the proper parts - only after I pulled the factory parts, drove to Autozone and had them cross checked the original PN#s on the bearings did I get the proper parts

Once I had the right parts it all went together as it should. I had to guesstimate the bearing preload because I didn't know I needed a 54mm socket and was using channel locks instead, not ideal but I made it work for the short term. Luckily I had a fish scale and was able to work things out with seating the bearings to 43lbs, backing it off and re torquing to aprox. 18lbs on the bearings and 12lbs of resistance to move the wheel. Haynes did not detail out how to set the bearings for this 2wd setup I read the 4wd info and used that for my set up - so far everything seems solid and true but once my 54mm socket arrives via mail order I am going to repack the bearings and re-seat everything to a more accurate spec.

Ok...enough of my tale of woe. Here are the part numbers I needed for a 1995 SR5 4Runner 2wd (with dual piston calipers and a 4wd style hub):

Inner bearings: Timken PN# JLM104948
Inner races: Timken PN# JLM104910 (NOT sold as a set with the inner bearings )
Inner hub grease seal: Timken PN# 710092
Outer bearings and races: Timken PN# SET47
Morse ceramic disc brake pads: PN# 611C
Performance Friction disc brake pads: PN# 4364

It should be trivial to get these parts but all the local parts shops computers had it wrong for my 4Runner! *nobody* had the proper parts listed in their computers for my 2wd 4Runner and it cost me a lot of extra time and money chasing them down after I tore the front end apart and realized the problem. One guy told me that the parts I actually needed were listed under a 1996 2wd 4Runner but that makes no sense to me as that is a 3rd gen chasis but go figure.

I am sorry this is so long but if it helps a single person out then it was all worth it. Bottom line is dont belive the Haynes manual for the wheel bearing info on a 2nd gen 2wd and dont trust the local parts shop computers - most likely it is all wrong information.