Don't let these front hubs scare you. If you re-use the original shims you will be fine in about 90% of the cases. The shim is to compensate for machining differences in the hub. The bearings themselves have tightly controlled tolerances. If you replace the bearings and keep the same shim, you should be fine. Do one hub at a time and that way you won't accidently put the wrong shim in the wrong hub. I know mechanics that have been doing this for years and I only know of one time that they had to send the hub out to a machine shop to get it right and that one time the guy found the shim later (after the machine shop picked it up) stuck to the bearing race. Other than that time, I would almost say that re-using the shim is always the best way to go. You can always try it, and if worse comes to worse (too tight or too much play), then send it out to a machine shop that specializes on pressing on and off hub bearings. Some NAPAs have machine shop services.
Comment