Hi Everyone,
What a great thread! This helped me so much doing this. My W126 had a vibration when braking down from 70 MPH to around 40, also had a vibration at 70+. Rotors were fine and I checked the bearings by trying to shake the wheel; the wheel would only rock at a certain position! So, make sure you check around all degrees of wheel position to diagnose this. After replacing one side the vibration is nearly gone. Some will challenge this, but I will say that this was a very mild job to tackle, and it was all due to having the right tools. Here are some highlights:
1. Finding parts right now is tough! I went to the MB dealer to get the slotted nuts and the washers. I have a local parts company that I work with called blunttech.com who always helps me out with my BMW 2002; they were able to find a kit from Vaico (p/n V30-0633). Before you thrash me for not going with premium bearings, I tried, there were none to be found. I tried to get two of these kits, as I need to do both sides, but they could only get one. For $55, it was a fair deal. I ended up sourcing the other side from ********.com;
TBD on that as I am still waiting for the parts (I still need to find another crush sleeve for that side).
2. Get a bearing separator to split the outer bearing off the hub, I bought this one
https://www.harborfreight.com/bearing-separator-63662.html. It seriously only took me like 2 or 3 minutes to get the bearing off, very easy.
3. Go rent a slide hammer and hub adapter from AutoZone, it will cost you nothing once you return it, and that way you do not have to hammer out the hub from the back side. Again, this was a big time saver, only took 10 second to remove the hub.
4. Go to the hardware store and get two 10.9 grade M12x1.5 bolts for holding the hub in position, do not mess around with lug bolts, as they are too short to do anything with anyways. I found bolts at my local Ace that were 75mm long, and those worked great.
5. I bought the Baum socket from Pelican to remove the slotted nut, it worked out very well. Just tap it in from the back side and it worked like a charm:
https://www.pelicanparts.com/More_Info/BM9150207.htm
6. I found brass punches at Northern Tool for a good price. These are essential for hammering out the inner/outer races:
https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200898127_200898127
7. To pull the inner bearing onto the hub, I used a bushing installation tool and it took care of the job in a minute. It is basically a long draw stud with two big washers, one that fits the bearing. The kit I used is from Schwaben and it is made to do subframe bushings in older BMWs, but I find that it has came in handy numerous times to press other things in.
Overall, I would rate this job a 2/5 if you have the right tools. If you do not, borrow them/rent them/look for them on FB marketplace, it will save you time, and will let you do the job the right way.
I made this entire job much harder by dropping the upper shock absorber washer down by the fuel tank, along with one of the nuts (I dropped the shock to get a bit more travel to pull the CV axle out). What a pain! I spent about 1 hour trying to fish those parts out, I learned a lot about how to access that area of the car, LOL. If you exclude that time, I had one side done in ~2 hours (and it was 90 degrees and high humidity, so I was taking some water breaks here and there).
-Bob