Warning! This is a potentially difficult job. Many people don't bother and get a garage to do things for them. I did the job myself. It took four hours for one side and five for the other. Reading the description below does not give any idea of the amount of effort and patience required. Freeing up and driving out firmly lodged parts can take a long time. Both times that I've done this job I've been alright....just.

The centre hub was removed using two methods. Firstly a punch was used to hammer it outwards. Since this started to mess up the surface, the method in the Haynes manual was used. Here the wheel bolts are threaded into their holes in the hub and pushed down onto packing pieces. Sockets will do. This causes the hub to pulled out. It can take a fair while to do this. As it progresses out the bearings will most likely fall apart leaving just the other race in the strut.

The outer race was removed next.

Firstly everything was softened up by heating for 20 minutes with a blow torch. The differential expansion as parts are heated helps flex the surface contact and make driving/pushing the bearing out more easy.

The picture shows a punch that was used to drive the race out. The key here is to apply only 2 or 3 sharp blows before moving the punch to another location. Since the bearing race is thin there is not much area to get the punch to contact. A way round this is to put the inner race back in together with a cage and a set of ball bearings. The inner race can then be hammered. Bit by bit the race will move. Impact is good at this moment since there will be microscopic movement with each blow. It all helps to start freeing up the contact surfaces. After ten minutes of this there was 5-10mm of movement.

The assembly was then placed in a vice and the bearing races pushed out with the aid of carefully placed packing pieces (sockets will do).Using a vice and packing pieces means that the strut, the bearing and the packing pieces need to be placed and the vice done up. This might take ten minutes to get right. It's quite tricky doing up the vice with your knee whilst trying to hold the parts. Having two people would make the job much easier.The force required to get the bearings in or out has been within the capabilities of the vice. Due to the nature of tolerances some will be easier than others. I've done this job twice and the second time it didn't take too much effort but the first time I was almost at the heave limit.

Part of the inner race was left on the hub. The Haynes manual instructs you to pull or drive this off. How the hell is that possible? My method was to use an angle grinder to make the race very thin in one place (less than 0.5mm). Since the metal is hardened it is also brittle. A few hammer blows via a punch was then enough to cause a crack to form and allow easy removal of the race.

The strut was cleaned out and lightly greased. One of the circlips was placed. The new bearing was pushed in using the vice with suitable spacers. A piece of tube was used to push the bearing the last few mm. It did not require much force at all to get the bearing in. But that's with a hefty vice.

The hub was then pushed back into the bearing. It is vitally important to push only on the inner race to avoid knackering the bearing.

I made a mistake once when I forgot to reattatch the brake crud guard before pressing in the hub. It wouldn't fit afterwards because the hole cut in it was smaller than the outside diameter of the hub. The solution was to hacksaw a cut line in the gaurd and then use its flexibility to allow it to be pulled over the hub.

The circlip was then replaced. Finally the strut was refitted to the vehicle.