SEAFORE

I feel a slight 'grinding' when turning right. It feels like the front end, and I am guessing a bearing is starting to go. Is there any way to determine if it is the right or left bearing based upon taper direction? BTW, I can't tell there is any looseness in either wheel when raised. Thanks for any suggestions

Jim Richards

Have you tried to repack the front wheel bearings?

crg53

QUOTE=Jim Richards;7888565]Have you tried to repack the front wheel bearings?[/QUOTE]

If you have to take the bearings out to repack, you may as well put new ones back in. These bearings are not your standard Timken brg. they are angular contact bearings, which to my knowledge are replace only. The bearing is item #2.

swmic

That's correct, you can not repack the grease in these bearings. Just replace which ever one is bad. It's fairly easy with a bearing puller. Try jacking the front of the car up and turning each wheel. You MIGHT be able to hear the bad bearing.

darth

"Is there any way to determine if it is the right or left bearing based upon taper direction?" Not sure what you mean by taper direction but if you hear the noise when you make right turns it is the bearing on the left as more pressure is being excerted on that side.

Jim Richards

Or feel the bad bearing.

swmic

Good point Jim. You'd probably be able to feel it while turning the wheel before you hear it.

SEAFORE

I will try the listed suggestions. I thought that it must be the left bearing if I hear/feel when turning right. I was not sure how difficult it was to replace, I have seen postings where it is indicated specialized tools are required.

sml

SEAFORE
you had some good advice here.
what was the solution/outcome?

SEAFORE

I have not gotten around to bearing replacement yet, but I will post results as soon as I tackle it.

mpotvin

C4 or C2? if you have a C4 check the sensors for the AWD, mine was loose and the sytem was trying to compensate for what it thought was a loss of traction...it manifested as a grinding noise and feel. I checked all my bearings, etc. with no problems found. Replacing the sensor cured the problem.
Good luck, Mark

SEAFORE

Just a final on this thread for those who may be able to use it in the future. I finally had my front wheel bearings replaced and this solved the problem noted earlier in this thread.
I am quite surprised how long it took for the bearing to finally get to the point that the car was nearly undrivable. About 2 years ago I started feeling a roughness during drives, similar to driving on a rough asphalt. A some point, I could feel the roughness more when turning. My car has the RUF suspension and is quite stiff, so a normal C2/C4 may not pickup this feel quite as soon? Anyway, I probably put well over 5000 miles on the bearings from the time I could feel roughness until replacement. For the first year or so I did not actually think this was bad enough to be the bearing, I thought it felt like tires wearing unevenly.
Upon inspection of the removed bearings, one side of front had distinct wear marks in the race, and both had grease that looked like it was mixed with sawdust.
New bearings are a huge improvement, I did not realize how bad it was until the new bearings were installed. Hope this information helps someone!

altarchsa

Which was the worse bearing? My experience has been that the bearing on the side away from the turning direction when it's making noise is the bad bearing, or in your case worse bearing. Usually the opposite side gets loaded more heavily due to the inertia, and therefore causes the bad bearing to make more noise. It's especially true with front bearings, but it was the case with my rear bearing when it went too.