Front wheel bearing loose and then not loose and then loose again..
Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2024 6:09 pm
I jacked up a front corner this morning to attend to the valve clearances and as I turned the wheel I noticed a lot of slack in the wheel bearing.
The bearing in question is the one that had to be fitted in Switzerland on the way down to last year's IMM, and so I'm surprised it's acting up again. It's a similar type of failure to the last one that gave so much trouble, tight sometimes if you turn the steering wheel, but a few turns of the road wheel and its loose again. Certainly not consistently loose.It's not making a noise though whilst driving, at least not yet. Driving in reverse will elicit a lot of clicking until the brake is pressed. I also get a lot of brake squeal from that side once the car's done a couple of miles which may or may not be related, but if there's movement, this presumably would heat the brakes up, making any squealing worse?
The bearing fitted on this side is a genuine Timken and was fitted by someone that did know what they were doing (I hope!) and so I'm largely ruling out a fitting error. What's concerning me is two failures in the same place with similar symptoms. The hub itself was a new part, could it be that this is machined out of tolerance leading to a misalignment of the two sides of the bearing?
The drive flange is/was a brand new 7" Cooper 998 type, and as the CV is the drum brake type, it wasn't tightened to the full 150lb or whatever it's supposed to be.
I'll try nipping it up for now and see if that helps, but I suspect something more is going on and short of just slinging a third bearing in it until I end up doing the Cooper S brake swap, I wonder if anyone here has any suggestions?
The bearing in question is the one that had to be fitted in Switzerland on the way down to last year's IMM, and so I'm surprised it's acting up again. It's a similar type of failure to the last one that gave so much trouble, tight sometimes if you turn the steering wheel, but a few turns of the road wheel and its loose again. Certainly not consistently loose.It's not making a noise though whilst driving, at least not yet. Driving in reverse will elicit a lot of clicking until the brake is pressed. I also get a lot of brake squeal from that side once the car's done a couple of miles which may or may not be related, but if there's movement, this presumably would heat the brakes up, making any squealing worse?
The bearing fitted on this side is a genuine Timken and was fitted by someone that did know what they were doing (I hope!) and so I'm largely ruling out a fitting error. What's concerning me is two failures in the same place with similar symptoms. The hub itself was a new part, could it be that this is machined out of tolerance leading to a misalignment of the two sides of the bearing?
The drive flange is/was a brand new 7" Cooper 998 type, and as the CV is the drum brake type, it wasn't tightened to the full 150lb or whatever it's supposed to be.
I'll try nipping it up for now and see if that helps, but I suspect something more is going on and short of just slinging a third bearing in it until I end up doing the Cooper S brake swap, I wonder if anyone here has any suggestions?