Thread: Wheel Bearing help

Recently I've had a noise coming from the front drivers side wheel in my 91 SE-R. It sounded similiar to a warped rotor so after replacing both rotors the noise is still present. I'm thinking it is the wheel bearing going bad and since I have not done a wheel bearing on this car yet I figured I would come on here and ask how I would check the hub and if I need to replace the whole hub to have bearings pressed out. The CV boots still look good but I'm thinking it could be the shaft going bad as well.


Any info or write-ups you guys can give me would be much appreciated, as I do not want to needlessly spend more money replacing parts.

One easy way to see if the bearing has failed is to jack up that side, grab the tire on either side with your hands and try to rock the wheel/tire in and out. If there is any play and the polay doesn't exist in the steering components then the bearing is toast. If there is no play, it could still be bad, there's just no easy way to tell.

As for replacing the bearing, you shouldn't need a new hub as long as you've caught the problem recently. I mean, within 3-6k miles.

To replace the bearing you need to disassemble the front suspension, let me see...
Remove the axle nut cotter pin, remove the axle nut castle thingy, loosen the axle nut. Remove the wheel/tire.
Remove the brake caliper.
Remove the brake rotor.
Remove the outer tie rod from the steering knuckle.
Remove the strut from the steering knuckle.
Remove the axle nut from the axle.
Remove the axle from the steering knuckle.
Remove the lower ball joint from the steering knuckle.

The steering knuckle/bearing/hub combination should now be free. Take it to a hydraulic press and press out the hub, then the bearing.
Press in new bearing, press in old hub.

Reassemble in reverse.

Thanks Ben. I was assuming it was pretty straight-forward.

I have tried checking for play in the assembly and there does not appear to be any whether from the 12-6 or 3-9 positions. I'm so tentative at this point because I simply don't want to remove everything only to not have it be the problem (again). As you said, there's really no good way of telling if a wheel bearing has gone bad.

I appreciate your help.

What type of rotor did you replace with? Typical auto parts store stuff is suspect. It could be a brand new rotor with high spots.

Brembo blanks I'd trust.

Yup, true. My auto parts place always recommends turning new rotors, especially the cheap chinese stuff.

I'll second the trust on Brembo's. Good stuff.

Brand new Napa NX2000 rotors. My car has the brakes swapped.

At this point, after replacing the rotors, I'm almost positive it's the wheel bearing. The noise is exactly the same as before, which means the rotors didn't do a thing. The bearing was suspect before, but now it's the main culprit. The only other thing I could think of would be something going bad in the CV Shaft.

My car only has 105,000 miles on it which is part of the reason why I don't want to believe it's the bearing.

My front bearings went bad at 118,000 miles.

i just replaced mine this month on my 94' SE-R....my wheel was being secured only by my axle nut and brake caliper. :o