Bad Front Wheel Bearing

[subsince77]

I posted elsewhere that I have been helping a friend who just bought a 98 OBW. It has had some rough use at the hands of a college kid who is now graduating. Mom and Dad bought him a brand new 4x4 truck, so he sold the Outback pretty cheap. We did a tune up, fluids etc, it already had both headgaskets and T-belt, and it also had the right front inner DOJ boot torn. My friend elected to just replace both front axles with MWE remans. So far so good.

 

But today, the mechanic who is installing the axles found that the right front wheel bearing was "essentially non-existent." He was going to just replace it, but found that the hub was ruined too. I didn't see any of this, but I trust his judgment. My friend had been going to drive the car over several mountain passes tonight to the Front Range, so I am glad the problem was discovered.

 

My question is, I drove this car, as did this mechanic. There was some minor scraping noise just for a second when you would just first start out forward, but nothing that would have indicated a completely ruined bearing. Has anyone ever seen a really bad bearing not making a bunch of noise?

 

And, that car has 111,000 on it. Mine has 217,000 on all original wheel bearings. Mine isn't making any noise at all, but now I'm a little nervous. Don't they usually let you know when they are going out? Is there some more serious action I should take on my car besides just turning the wheels and listening, pushing etc? It just got me thinking.

[EVOthis]

I have seen a couple...I have actually had customer complaints about a shimmy more than a noise....and It turned out they needed a wheel bearing...sometimes withe the car in the air even when you dont hear anything...grab the tire at 12 and 6 and than again at 9 and 3...if you notice excessive play in both directions chances are the wheel bearings gave out....you could also tighten the axle nut....if the play dissapears chances are youve got a bad wheel bearing... my 96 Legacy had this problem...I didnt hear anything and was just prodding around one day and I had what I described...excessive play and no noise...Its obviously more common though to hear them going bad..

[idosubaru]

a friend brought his 97 legacy to me with something similar. the bearings were pretty bad (loose), but it wasn't making all that much noise at all. never made the typical "wub, wub, wub..." wheel bearing noise. a light scraping sometimes.

 

bearings go bad due to heat (brakes) or loosing/contaminated grease. if the wheel seals are bad (where the axle inserts), then dirt/water gets in and grease gets out.

 

you get lots of warning with wheel bearings, i wouldn't worry about yours with 200+k miles. i mean if you got gobs of time and don't mind then sure it's good PM, but with that kind of mileage you're likely to have other things to worry about at some point so i'd just leave them.

 

if you did it you'd probably be doing maintenance that will last 15 years on a car you'll only have for another 5.

[subsince77]

Thanks for the info. I also thought it was odd that only one wheel seems to be a problem, and it is the same one that had the only torn boot on the car. Not that the boot had anything to do with it, just seemed like the front right quarter was where the most problems were. Everything else looks good though I guess.

 

I believe they found a used hub someplace that's being shipped. I offered to see if someone here had one, but they had already ordered it. Too bad, they were looking forward to driving their "new" Outback over to a marathon this weekend. Oh well, by the middle of next week they should be up and running.

[CNY_Dave]

I posted elsewhere that I have been helping a friend who just bought a 98 OBW. It has had some rough use at the hands of a college kid who is now graduating. Mom and Dad bought him a brand new 4x4 truck, so he sold the Outback pretty cheap. We did a tune up, fluids etc, it already had both headgaskets and T-belt, and it also had the right front inner DOJ boot torn. My friend elected to just replace both front axles with MWE remans. So far so good.

 

But today, the mechanic who is installing the axles found that the right front wheel bearing was "essentially non-existent." He was going to just replace it, but found that the hub was ruined too. I didn't see any of this, but I trust his judgment. My friend had been going to drive the car over several mountain passes tonight to the Front Range, so I am glad the problem was discovered.

 

My question is, I drove this car, as did this mechanic. There was some minor scraping noise just for a second when you would just first start out forward, but nothing that would have indicated a completely ruined bearing. Has anyone ever seen a really bad bearing not making a bunch of noise?

 

And, that car has 111,000 on it. Mine has 217,000 on all original wheel bearings. Mine isn't making any noise at all, but now I'm a little nervous. Don't they usually let you know when they are going out? Is there some more serious action I should take on my car besides just turning the wheels and listening, pushing etc? It just got me thinking.

 

I had a ford ranger 4wd pickup that would eat a front wheel bearing with almost no symptoms, except a loud 'clunk' when it shifted from tilting left to tilting right.

 

The wheel bearing arrangement was very similar (2 identical bearings very close to each other), although it went together very differently.

 

 

Dave