Wierd Noise

[BudW]

Tuesday Morning, as I was leaving the twins school, I heard a weird noise from my station wagon. First it sounded like a pop then a grind noise, then nothing. I was thinking that's odd and kept going.

Get closer to home (school is about a mile from my home) and try to stop – and NO brake petal. Quick thinking, sense I have had been down this path before, I put car into neutral while pumping the brake petal. Car starts to slow down and I now know I have a big problem now. Once home, I have to get ready for my day job and take the 5th Ave to work.

This evening I get wagon under the carport and start to ponder what failed. First guess is wheel bearing. Second guess is spindle end broke. Why – because excessive wheel wobble is pushing the brake pads away from brake rotor and that takes a few pumps of brake petal to re-contact the rotor.

First thing I check is brake fluid level. Its OK – so no brake fluid leak.

I jack Left Front wheel off off of ground and grab a hold of wheel at 3 and 9 o'clock position. There is roughly 2 inches of play. I said bingo.
Lower car down, pop hubcap off and next thing I know is the dust cap falls off as well.

Note: dust cap was loose behind hub cap.

I just changed tires/wheels on car before a car show in June, in process I cleaned off excessive grease by the dust caps. Car had newish brake pads on car when I purchased it 4,000 miles earlier so I had nothing to do with that (yet). Brake pads still look almost new.

Remove wheel and check for play again. Not a pretty sight. I took a short video, but its 50MB in size.

Cotter pin is still in place. The nut is a bit harder to remove than usual. I find something behind the nut and was able to capture it with drop light.

The inner bearing and inner bearing surface on spindle looks ok – but outer bearing is siezed onto spindle (not good). At this time, I figured its time to stop now before waking the sleeping kids.

You can see parts of the bearing (barely).

You can see where the brake rotor was making contact with brake caliper bracket.

I'm lucky this didn't happen hours away from home or going 70-80 MPH at the time. I was planning on visiting someone a state away, fairly soon.

BudW
Note: this car only has 38k miles on it!

 

[Justwondering]

BudW
I am so thankful you were able to stop the car.
Glad no one was hurt.

how do you 'fix' this now?
Bekasu

 

[BudW]

I just got the inner wheel bearing removed from the spindle, using a puller. The spindle shows no sign of discoloration but does have some light scoring to the outer bearing surface.

Spindles are heat treated from factory and I believe if a spindle got hot enough to turn blue or black, then the heat treating might no longer be present (no facts to back this up). Spindles are too important for me to trust a discolored from heat, issue.

I think some light filing may take care of the roughness to inner bearing spindle surface. The inner bearing (the large one) is one that takes most of the vehicle weight and that bearing spindle area looks great – so I think I will be fine. Matter of fact, the inner bearing has some recent iron shavings in it but otherwise looks decent.

Now to get some parts.

Note: I generally only see these type of failures with “cheap” bearings or cars that are WAY WAY WAY past normal maintance.

Brake pads last roughly 30k miles on our cars. It is important to remove brake rotors to surface for new brake pads, and to clean, inspect and re-pack the wheel bearings at same time. Also, doing so, will remove any errant iron shavings produced by machining the brake rotors.
If a person does that, then these wheel bearings will last forever.

This bearing had mostly enough grease in it to last 30k miles and grease appears to have been replaced a few thouthand miles ago – so not exactly sure what failure is from. It might just a cheap bearing?

Note: front wheel bearings should slide freely on the spindle. They shouldn't be loose or require effort to push/pull into place.

 

[Aspen500]

I had an '81 D150 that did that exact same thing years (and years) ago. No indication of any problem and all of a sudden, bang, scrape, grind. I felt the steering wheel jerk when it happened. Fortunately only a mile or so from home. Limped it home and into the garage.
Same thing, outer bearing failed and seized to the spindle. Made in USA bearings and didn't fail from lack of maintenance either, just failed SUDDENLY. Carefully slit the inner race and got it off the spindle, and a little cautious grinding and some emery cloth, new set of bearings and races,,,,,,,,,,,good as new.

I'm not sure what causes them to fail without warning. That happens to this day even with the sealed hub/bearing assy's. No noise or anything and then,,,,,,,,,BANG,,,,,,all done and the car or truck comes in on the flat bed with an obvious negative camber problem on one of the front wheels.

 

[BudW]

I was able to use a small puller to remove the small bearing race from the spindle, without difficulty.
Not started to clean the spindle, yet.


I spent a good amount of time trying to replace the outer bearing race from the brake rotor, this morning, and ruined a punch doing so. After looking at the brake rotor (which is fine except for this bearing race) – there is NO provision machined into the rotor to punch the old race out.

I ended up getting a new brake rotor ($50 bucks, US) so I could get car out of where my wife parks at, and wagon back on the road.

The outer bearing race, as viewed from back side of (new) brake rotor, is shown between the black and red arrows. There is a bit of a lip to use a punch to tap it out with (but not much). My existing rotor had a wire thin lip. I took photos but sense it wasn’t clean, pictures didn’t show up, well.

The inner bearing race is shown by the orange arrow.

$75.00 (approximate) spent so far. Could have gotten it for almost ½ that from RockAuto.com.

 

[jasperjacko]

I'm curious as to why the inner seal came out of the rotor? Should be a press fit.

 

[BudW]

My outer bearing race is toast and I was trying to replace it.

No problem with inner bearing race or seal (the big one), per se.

 

[Aspen500]

Look at it this way, $75 but you had the parts right away or, spend less but wait until UPS or FedEx shows up in your driveway, AND,,,,,,,,,,,you supported a local business.

 

[BudW]

No argument there.
Keeping the misses happy is job one.

 

[Dr Lebaron]

If they were FAG bearings, I've heard that bad FAGs blow seals.

LOL, I can say that and still be P/C.

 

[Aspen500]

If they were FAG bearings, I've heard that bad FAGs blow seals.

LOL, I can say that and still be P/C.

 

[BudW]

I didn’t look at the bearing manufacture marking on the bearings.

The brake rotors just look too good to be the original ones (hardly any rust on them, even in the vents) – so I suspect the rotors were replaced, along with brake pads, just before I bought the car, a year ago. I also suspect the rotors are the normal grade one would get from China (not the normal grade from made in USA/Canada) – being there is no provision to punch out the outer bearing race.

That said, I also suspect low grade bearings were installed - instead of cleaning and re-packing the old bearings,


I understand, and really like to have a choice on different grade parts from part stores.
That said, I choose the "better" parts for brakes and suspension components.

 

[Dr Lebaron]

You got the pun, but it went over Bud's head.