rear wheel bearing

[Perseverant]

I haven't posted anything for a while. A noise somewhere behind me was a wheel bearing but I couldn't work out which side - the local garage are very helpful and put the car on a lift to run it and listen - driver's side bearing. I'd bought a bearing kit earlier so set to. The hub nut was very tight but jamming the wheel with a crowbar and using my 3/4 drive bar and an extension tube shifted it. The snag then was that the hub wouldn't come off the splines and I didn't want to hammer on the end in case I damaged the inboard bearing. Anyhow, I removed the driveshaft and the hub as a lump and took it to the garage - they said to leave it and the bearing kit. Went back next morning and had a "shoemaker and elves" experience as they'd done the bearing and removed the stubs of the bolts that held the abs sensor which I'd ground off to remove said sensor - and all for no charge! The mechanic said that as I'm a good customer and have a fair idea about how cars work it was a complementary freebie. All went back together no problem and now no horrible noises.
One odd thought was that the manual said to mark the inboard bearing so the sections go back in the same relationship, which seemed a common enough comment, but since when you separate the inner and outer parts of the bearing all the balls fall out, I couldn't see the point. I did actually mark the bits, cleaned lots of grease out and packed lots in, followed by a certain sleight of hand to hold greasy ball bearings in their cage and shove the sections of bearing together - all a lot lighter since the driveshaft and hub could be fitted separately.