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!
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!
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