How to replace your rear wheel bearings without a press?

I was changing my rear wheel bearings today and thought it might be cool to do it without the press and take some pictures in case anyone wants to attempt this at home. It's a pretty simple process, but a visual walkthrough might help some people so here we go. 

The first step is to take your wheel off.

Next, remove the two 14mm bolts that hold your brake caliper bracket and move the whole assembly aside.

Remove your axle nut and pull the brake rotor off.

Attach a slide hammer to the lugnuts and give it a couple solid hits to pull the hub out (it's easiest to do this on the car).

This is what it looks like after the hub has been removed.

Remove the upper and lower bolts that hold the remaining bearing housing and pull it from the car.

The big c clip that keeps the bearing in the housing will probably be rusted in by now.

Hit that bad boy with some sort of penetrating oil and give it a few taps with a chisel in the direction show to break it loose.

After you have it loose, use some c clip pliers to remove the clip and turn the housing over.

Secure the housing in a vice and knock out the bearing with a hammer and socket/pipe.

This is what it looks like with the bearing removed.

Clean the inner bore of the housing and lightly oil it to help keep the new bearing from binding when it is installed.

This is an important part, so take your time. Make sure the new bearing is sitting squarely on the housing and lightly tap it into place. Make sure it goes in straight by alternating your taps from side to side on the outside lip of the bearing. 

Make sure that you drive it all the way down into the housing, so that the groove for the c clip is exposed. Grease the groove a little and reinsert the c clip.

Remember this guy? We need to get that bearing race off of there before we can put the hub back into the bearing.

This is the part we are going to remove.

Put the hub in a vice to secure it and use a chisel to drive the race off of the hub.

After you remove the bearing race, check the hub for any nicks and file them smooth.

Set the hub squarely on the bearing and start tapping it into place.



Drive it all the way down, using oil if necessary to keep it from binding.



Turn the housing over and check to make sure that the inner bearing race didn't start to pop out the other side, if it did gently tap it back into place.



Put the housing back onto the car and reinstall the upper and lower bolts that hold it in place.



Put the rotor back on and then the brake caliper assembly. Reinstall the two 14mm bolts that hold the caliper bracket in place.



Replace the axle nut and torque it to spec, then use a chisel to peen the nut to the groove in the axle.

That's about all there is to it, I would suggest using an anti-seize compound on all of the bolts and axle splines.