The right front wheel bearing on my 99 S70 is groaning. I was looking on FCP Euro's website and they show that the 99 S70 uses a bolt instead of a nut to secure the axle onto the hub. Can the existing bolt be reused or do they need to be replaced any time the axle/hub are disturbed? Also, are the four hub bolts reusable and do they require a special tool for removal? If so, do you guys have a link for the tool? Finally, the entire bearing set for the vehicle are orginal to the car. Is it likely that the driver's side wheel bearings as well as the rears are will go out in the near future?

 

I think what you are looking at is the 4 bolts that hold the hub assembly to the spindle assembly; they are a hex bolt, nogt sure of the size. There is not much room so you will need a box wrench to get it off. I don;t recall you can get a socket on it.

The driveshaft is held in place with the large nut in the center. Many of the hub assemblies come with the center nut.

The 4 bolts can be reused as far as I know. The large nut should be replaced. Many of the sites will give you the torqueing procedure for the large nut. You may also want to consider having an alignment pin handy as well. I removed one and it broke off. The pin helps with the rotor alignment, htough its a bit of a pain for putting the wheel back on.


As far as replacing all 4, that is subjective to a number of things. If the car has a lot of miles on it then I would agree that if you replace 1 front, the other should be considered or at least inspected. I don;t know I would correlate the wear of the front to the wear of the rear. Different stresses and weights.

 

The Volvo hub kits come with new bolts, aftermarket ones may not. No need to replace the rest of the hubs if they are not failing.

 

 

I would do a bearing at a time. They don't go bad at same time.

You need a puller to get the bearing out of the knuckle. Some shops do rent such tools. The bearing casing gets stuck in the knuckle because the knuckle alloy gets corroded. Just like the wheels. It really takes a puller for this job.

Both the axle bolt and the four bearing bolts are stretch type. You cannot tighten the old bolts to the specs, or they may break when you put them back or when you will be driving. It's about 40$ for the set at Volvo. For the peace of mind, buy the set.

If your knuckle is the same as in the video, this may help

 

You don't need a puller, a hammer works fine.

 

About the hammer, I cannot guess how much each bearing assembly is seized on every car, but on mine it took me an hour of kicking hard, because I didn't got the puller. The bearing hub got bent before I managed to pull the bearing out from kicking with the hammer, and the knuckle was also chipped because I also had to use a chisel and lots of penetrating oil. It was way too hard to recommend using a hammer for this particular job. There was a thick ring of corroded alloy between the bearing hub and the knuckle, that was seizing the hub in place. I got to clean it as well.

 

I've never had one that didn't come out with a hammer. If you had an air hammer, you could put a hammer bit in and hit the back of the hub.