Took my 05" CE auto in for regular tire rotation Monday. Returned Wednesday because of low-pitched whine/wobble sounded like wheel bearing. Apparently rotors wearing prematurely,(64,000 miles) and slightly out of align. Repairs done, but whine still there....told tires are cupping. Steering worse after alignment. Car pulls right within two seconds. Held straight line for over ten seconds before. Did I get hosed?
With mine, it was a "droning" sound, that rose and fell with vehicle speed, which is why I attributed it to tire noise. I jacked it up and gave it the free play check (grabbing the tire top and bottom and seeing if there was any movement), and there was none. Rotated tires, no difference. I took it to my mechanic, he diagnosed and fixed it for me...if the other rear bearing goes, I will do it myself, as it is a very straight forward procedure. I assumed that a special bearing press was needed, but the whole hub assembly is held in by 4 bolts...the hardest thing is pulling the brake drum off
The front assembly, now, I wouldn't want to attempt that....
bhp02, if you are talking about the rear bearing, the whole hub assembly has to be replaced...not like the old days when you could pull out the bearing, clean and repack it, and tap in a new oil seal, unfortunately:(
You might have gotten hosed. The bearing failure will aggravate the brakes and rotors causing premature failure,
vibration and sound. The bearing problem is very difficult to diagnose as the wheels may not "shake" when you
apply pressure to it. When you examine the old bearing/hubb assembly after removing it from the car, it is still hard
to determine that the bearings are failing. In my case, it was by trial and error, putting in a new hub/bearing, which
fixed the problem.
Now I am waiting for other bearings to fail. What gets me is that bearing failure is quite rare in most cars, even
of less quality than toyota. The technology/design has been around for ages for making them so that they
don't fail even at 200k miles. Other steering/suspension compenents usually fail first.
Forgot to mention that doing alginment on a car with failing bearings is really stupid, dump, and maybe dangerous.