2010 Prius wheel bearing or worse??

I would Jack up a wheel at a time and spin by hand listening carefully to the hub then try pulling the wheel side to side and from the bottom up to see if there is any movement. Even the slightest of movement suggests a bearing needs replacing. Good luck but I am sure the dealer will be able to help diagnose the problem though you might find it cheaper to get the work done if required elsewhere.

 

how many miles on her?

 

plug the vin into toyota owners website, any dealer service should show up.

 

When the left front bearing was bad on my old Gen 1, I was completely unable to catch or confirm it by any technique short of driving with a ChassisEar. Nothing I could do with the car raised or without driving forces on the bearing ever gave any indication of a problem. Thermal imaging after a drive even showed the bad bearing a tad cooler (!) than the good one on the other side, so that wasn't any help.

The ChassisEar made an open-and-shut case in, like, 10 seconds (not counting the time to stick the mics on the four corners and start driving, of course).

-Chap

 

just like Sim said. Jack it up, grab the top and bottom of the tire and see if it wiggles. ANY motion at all = replace the hubs. I went for a ride in my sons 2005 (275k miles) last week and couldn't believe the growling noise I was hearing from the right front area. He was oblivious to it and thought it was just tire/road noise. Jacked up passenger side and it moved like crazy top and bottom. Didn't even bother testing the driverside. Ordered two Timken hub assemblies @~$110 each and they arrived in 3 days. Spend the extra few dollars and get a quality hub. I wasn't going to buy one of those $41 hubs and then do the job again next year. Just got done doing the right side this evening. This car has never been exposed to anything other than southern winters and that hub was a BEAR to get off. A slide hammer with a hub adapter attachment ended up pulling the wheel stud/hub portion out of the bearing. Then had to attach the "hub adapter" to the hub mounting flange. It took probably 2 or 3 hundred strikes to get that flange out due to the dissimilar metal corrosion between the aluminum and steel. My arms still ache (after I finally got that apart yesterday, I was so beat that I gave up for the night). This job (at least on Gen 2) CAN be done without removing the knuckle. All I had to do was remove the caliper, the disc, the speed sensor and the axle nut. The dust cover on the back can be popped off and moved as needed to allow your socket to get on the four flange mount bolts. Axle nuts are cheap, so buy new ones before you start the job. Don't risk reusing the old ones. The threads are very easy to damage when "un-staking" the nut. You may want to plan ahead and get a spindle rethreading die ahead of time. They're available online for about 15 bucks. The 2005 spindle has a M22 x 1.5 thread. If there's any doubt about the spindle threads, clean 'em up so you don't gall the nut/spindle together. Autozone has the slide hammer and the hub adapter available in their loan-a-tool program. Here's a couple photos of the old hub after it came out. Also, the test drive with the new hub was awesome. Quiet as a mouse. Will do driverside this weekend probably.

 

I have never heard of a chassis ear just rely on head ears! I changed the rear Bearings on my old Prius with Febest I passed the old car down and it is still running 200K Miles and still quiet

 

I had never heard of a ChassisEar either before that time I had to get one and use one, and yes, it shocked me to learn a wheel bearing could fail in such a way that none of the techniques I had earlier relied on could prove that was what it was. But I've since seen a number of PriusChat threads from people in the same boat.

-Chap

 

at around the 100,000 miles but I had an enginer plugin kit in it so around 100KGs extra load before I carried anything, the front bearings are still original