How much to have a rear wheel bearing replaced? Approximately obviously.

Knowing which car it is might help…

Sorry – Fiat Marrea Estate. Obviously not intending to go to a Fiat dealer. Car is worthless but can't afford to change and need to keep on the road for attending interviews.

I know if I did it myself the bearings would be cheap from a factor but with no car tools I imagine I'd end up paying almost as much to get kitted out. And hopefully once I'm employed again I won't be worrying about wheel bearing DIY replacement.

I would say around the ton mark. Hours labour plus parts. Ish.

My local mechanic would charge about £60.

I'm not sure on the type of bearing used but I remember doing an old Golf and it was a simple taper roller. Was a doddle to change and no special tools were required. The bearing was £8. Would be worth checking out…

Yeah, no more than £120

Hmm – was hoping about £40-£50. May end up DIY by the look of it.

Cheers chaps

You got a press?

AS said – depends on whether it needs to be pressed out or not…

Can you not strip off the stub axel, disconnect the handbrake, and hydraulic lines, then anti roll bar , and shock. Then , hopefully you can remove the offending corner and take it into a small engineer's and see if they can press out the knackered one and push in the new one. Its a 15 min job withthe correct tooling.
The problem you will come across is the stub axel mounts will be corroded, and be a biatch to undo.
Reckon you could get it done for £20 cash.

depends on the car, its just taken me the best part of 6 hours to replace the front left bearings on the midget, and thats with all the correct tools! Some cars just dont make the job easy.

Remove wheel
Remove brake calliper (PITA as the safety retaining tabs seem to be the most solid part fo the car!)
Remove hub-cap and nut
Bearing puller to remove hub from axel
Locate suitable drifts for removing bearings.
Strip all the bearings out (one cartridge and a seal on each side).

Degrease everything (this can take a while)

Locate suitable drifts and spacers for pressing the brarings in, this takes a while.

Press bearings in (this takes a while, the tolerances are much much tighter than your average MTB hub, even with a press this takes some serious brute force)

remove disk from hub
wipe off any remaining grease, remove gloves (its easier to know if your getting grease everywhere without them)
Install new disk,

Press hub back onto axel and repeat the removal process.

On the other hand it could just be a needle taper roller bearing and will take you next to no time.

some are easier than others.some of them might have a big housing around them that you replace all at the same time.the ibiza rear bearings are about £80 for original seat brand.the pug 106 bearing was around £48 the last time i bought one.if you go and start buying tools then it could fairly add up.removing a nut thats been torqued to 260nm wont be done with yer neighbours socket set either so maybe just save some money and take it to a mechanic thats not going to hammer you for labour.you could order the bearing from a local motor factor first and tell the mechanic that you had planned on fitting it but after looking in the haynes manual..you found out that you didnt have the tools.

some cars are nice and easy to fix. i just fitted an exhaust discs and pads on the rear of the 106 this afternoon.discs were 12quid each and thats not even a trade price. cheaper than the bike by far! search around and you will get the bearing dead cheap.

I asked 2 different garages and they both wanted over £100 for it doing on an old Megane

You'll need a bearing press/puller depending on the design to do it DIY. A decent cheap garage will do it for 50-60, a "large" or chain garage might charge 100ish, a dealer much more. You could take the bearing/drum/hub to someone else to press out but they'll charge you ~20 to do it.

Oh, and beware, unfortunately you'll probably find another going fairly soon, but at least it'll give you some time to save up again!

Had one done on a Citroen ZX…didn't cost more than £100 but I was lucky…

I'd felt some resistance the day before when driving at low speeds, though the handbrake was dragging. The next day at 70mph the handling suddenly got very interesting, it felt like I was driving in very deep lorry ruts in the tarmac, with the car driving fine for a few minutes then suddenly veering off course! The wheel bearing had collapsed leaving the wheel with about 2 inches of play in all directions. Got recovered back home on a flatbed, local garage did the work and said that it was a borderline case for a new stub axle…I expect that would be expensive…