What I hope is saving me an accident

Yeah, we had to cut out the outer race since it wouldn't press out...Oxy-acetylene torches took care of it haha

Once we got a little slice of the race essentially melted out it popped right out. There was a small spot on the inside of the knuckle that got a little hot, but we just polished it up a little bit and it looked fine.

All in all I don't think it was that bad of a job on my car. I'm hoping the other side comes apart as easily when I have to do it. I spent $40 on the bearing, so the cost wasn't bad at all. Having it up on the hoist gave me a chance to see how rusty my oil pan is getting though, so I'll be keeping my eye out for someone getting rid of one!

^My guess is that your other side will co-operate a lot more if you get to it before it starts to go noticeably bad. I'm pretty sure the heat and pounding has a lot to do with seizing them in. Chances are that if one side was bad then the other side is very close to done as well.

Hopefully if you installed a seal you RTV'd that little hole that Mazda thought was a good idea which in turn just sucks dirt in and destroys the bearing in 6 months. These cars love to go through bearings if its not sealed completely. Some guys even say to leave the seal out.

When I took my axle nut off and turned my hub, it just fell right out. That was kind of scary to me. I will never let a bearing go for that long again.

I didn't bother with a seal. If it lasted over 100k miles without it, then I'm not going to worry about it. I did curse the use of pressed bearings when that stupid thing wouldn't come out though! It was so much easier when I could just replaced the hub and all, but oh well, I guess 6 one way, half dozen the other.

I just found out that my friends P5 was just totalled because of getting rear ended...maybe you'll see a few parts up here if they decide to part it out, I told them I could help try to get rid of parts...maybe I'll just steal the passenger side hub from that one and not have to worry about it haha (wouldn't actually take the hub, but couldn't resist the idea haha)

KMac said:

Hopefully if you installed a seal you RTV'd that little hole that Mazda thought was a good idea which in turn just sucks dirt in and destroys the bearing in 6 months. These cars love to go through bearings if its not sealed completely. Some guys even say to leave the seal out.

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The original design of P5 had a seal but was quickly deleted and a notch put in. (My car was built Sept. 2001 and doesn't have the seal). They found that instead of sealing dirt and water out,.. it was sealing it in right up against the bearing where it would work its way in. The seal has to mate up with a huge sloppy surface which was difficult to do. These bearings were failing so fast that the design was changed even before my car was built. The original design was probably failing within months on a new car.