ptindall

Hi all. I just had an odd expirience so I thought I'd see if anyone else has had the same. A couple weeks ago, I found I had a bad front wheel bearing. Got a new one, threw it in, long brake pedal was gone, I was happy. But I didn't bother to check my rears. Last week I went on a 2300 mile trip with the car and after coming out of Death Valley, my rear pad squeelers started going off so I stopped at the nearest mechanic's shop and just had them check it out and cut the feelers off as I had pads to put on it when I got home. They only had to last the rest of the trip. So I'm standing there and while the guy had the rear of the car up, I ask him to give the wheels a wiggle to check out the bearings. Sure enough, one of the rears wiggles pretty good. I could see it from where I was standing. The other one was tight. So I ordered a rear bearing. Last night I went to work changing the rear pads and bleeding the brakes. (I have not gotten my new bearing yet) Now I can't get that bearing to move at all! Feels tight to me. So my question is, is it possible for it to be bad but only show it sometimes, is the mechanic way stronger than me, or was both the mechanic and I wrong in the first place? Can anybody explain this for me? I thought maybe when the mechanic got it to wiggle, the lug nuts may not have been tight and he was just wiggling the wheel but I thought for sure they were tight at the time and he should know better than that. I don't know what else could explain it.

96CollectorSport

Did he grab at 12 and 6 or did he grab at 3 and 9? If the wheel "wiggles" at 12 and 6 and 3 and 9 then you have a bad wheel bearing, if it only wiggles at 3 and 9 then you have a bad toe (tie) rod end. Just a thought.
- Joel

ptindall

He did 9 and 3 (fore and aft, not up and down) But I can't get it to move in either axis.

BrianCunningham

The loose part wedged itself back into the hole perhaps?

A wheel bearing is the last thing you want to fail.
I'd rather blow the engine.

I'd change it out just to make sure.

ptindall

Yeah, I already have it on order so I'm going to install it when I get it anyway.

R Mackow

A friend who does alot of track days has had a front fail as he was coming into the pit area. One of the three bolt flanges on the bearing had "torn"/or partially sheared around the T-55 torx head screw that holds the bearing to the aluminum housing. The wheel was "off" axis enough that another driver commented as soon as the C5 came into the pits.

the blur

Things expand and contract with temperature variations.

davidfarmer

the e-brake and axle hardware make the rears much more difficult to detect. If it "wiggled" for him, it is most certainly toast!

the blur

also, if you rotate the wheel 90 degree's, you might find the weak spot in the bearing. If not, rotate it another 90 degrees, and try again.
But always testing play at top and bottom.

sounds like this guy found a loose rod end, not a bad bearing.

ptindall

I understand that possibility, but I don't understand why I couldn't duplicate it, if the toe rod end is bad.

0Randy@DRM

Wheel bearings are kinda like engines. They run really good right before they fail. Replace and throw that one away.

Randy

SouthernSon

I go with bad tie rod end that wedged itself tight for the moment. Been there/done that.......

Jason

Compared to sticking the car in the wall, parts are cheap.
Replace the wheel bearing and the tie-rod end.

Ojustracing

Mechanic's have a secret way of making things look bad when there really not. . I've been a memeber of this club for a long time and have gotten very good at doing this.

If it was at 9 and 3 I would suspect tie rod too...
John

DRKCYDE

I am curious as to why you would think this?

Jason

Because if you pop an engine on track, you coast back to the pits.
If you lose a bearing, it's most likely going to be in a highG corner, and you're going into the wall.

the blur

you can pop a motor on track, lock the motor up, which locks up the rear end, and puts you into a wall.

you can spin in some else's coolant, and go into wall.

a wheel bearing you can feel it in the brake pedal, or hear it, and "usually" the caliper braket holds the wheel in position while your coasting down.

any failures can be deadly, or nothing, all depending..............

SouthernSon

I suppose it would depend on very subjective variables. But, given the choice of driving a car with a known bad bearing or a car with a bad engine at very high speed, I think I would probably take the car with suspect engine........

BrianCunningham

I've taken one apart.

The stock races are plastic

ptindall

Update:

On Saturday I changed the suspect wheel bearing, but it wasn't my problem. Before I got started, I picked up the back of the car and had my brother there as another set of eyes to see what was going on. We could make the rear wheel move a bit fore and aft, but it wasn't the loose feel in the center with hard stops feeling I got when I had a bad front wheel bearing. Instead, it felt tight, but if you pushed and pulled hard, you could make it move. A rubbery sort of feel. We did narrow it down to the spindle pivoting on the ball joints, not the control arms themselves moving. So Tie rod end would seem to be the problem. But with one person moving it and the other watching, you could see there was no play the the tie rod end itself. If you looked directly at the outboard part of the tie rod, you would see it moving sort of at an angle up and down and in and out. But if you looked directly at the inner tie rod end where it mounts to the subframe, you see no movement at all. It's hard to describe. It looked like the tie rod was actually flexing. I went ahead and replaced the bearing anyway as I had a new one sitting right there, but the problem did not change. I went to the track and drove the **** out of it the next day. Any thoughts?