Beginning of the end for LF wheel bearing?

also the cv joint, possibly, but bearing more likely. or bad tyre?

 

Have it looked at immediately!! If that bearing go's at highway speed it will be disastrous...

This is nothing to play around with.

 

For a bit of perspective, don't ignore it, and do get it fixed as soon as you've ID'd what's going. I've had to change two wheel bearings on my 2001, the right rear and the left front. When the right rear was going, my schedule was requiring weekly 600 mile trips with very little time for anything else, and it took me about 2100 miles before I pinned down the failing bearing. It was definitely noisy and rough when I replaced it, but it was still nowhere near catastrophic failure. (In fact, it totally held up to the several minutes of slide hammering I needed to separate the hub assembly from the axle beam, and it came out intact.)

When it was my front bearing, I started noticing the sound in July or August, and pinned down which bearing it was by about mid-September, and replaced it a couple weeks later.

As far as construction goes, the rear wheel hubs (non-driving) are only held onto the car by the bearings, and once a bearing is simply worn past a certain point, a wheel could depart from the car. The bearing would seem terribly noisy and loose before that happened.

As for the front wheel hub, it isn't going anywhere as long as the big staked nut is there on the end of the drive axle. Maybe if the bearing totally seized, made smoke and molten metal and destroyed the axle end. I have no idea how long you'd have to ignore all the signs to have a risk of that happening. So, just don't ignore it, and make some time in the schedule to take care of it.

I did find a video (below) showing a vehicle after loss of a non-drive wheel (that vehicle is a rear-wheel-drive so it was a front wheel that separated, although the vehicle was pointed the other way by the time it came to rest).

For extreme perspective, I think my favorite Prius complaint ever filed with NHTSA is number 10166051. The first sentence gives you "POTENTIAL FOR FATAL INJURY DUE TO LOSS OF CONTROL BECAUSE OF FAULTY DRIVER'S SIDE REAR AXLE HUB BEARING FAILURE WITH SEPARATION OF WHEEL FROM VEHICLE" and you have to finish reading the whole complaint before you realize

1. "POTENTIAL" applies to the whole first sentence, the wheel never separated, the removed hub/bearing was only "NEARLY AT A COMPLETE FAILURE POINT" when the owner finally had it changed, and
2. That was in 2006, after the owner had ignored the noise since 2003 with it growing to "80-100 DECIBEL SOUND LEVEL IN PASSENGER COMPARTMENT"!

So ... don't become unintendedly famous on the NHTSA site ... don't wait three years to change your bearing! (Or if you do, certainly don't file an NHTSA complaint of a car defect!)

-Chap

 

I think conventional hydraulic power steering also qualifies as a servo, so I'm guessing you just mean you're not familiar with the electric kind. The trouble with the Gen 1 rack would be a noisy feedback signal coming back from the torque sensor. The symptoms tended to be a twitchy feeling in the steering wheel (usually right around the straight-ahead position where it spends most of its time), occasional shutting down of the power assist (with or without the "PS" icon illuminated on the MFD warning screen), or the classic one, steering wheel shaking like a wet dog in your hands during a low-speed maneuver while you have a light grip. (If that ever happens to you, just grip more firmly. It's not a matter of having to muscle the servo into submission; you just couple the mass of your arms into the system, changing its resonant frequency and the oscillation typically dies right out. In contrast, a lot of the NHTSA reports are from drivers who reacted by letting go of the wheel and were treated to a much longer sustained show of violent shaking back and forth.) A steering code, typically C1513, will be stored if you are in this lucky club.

It won't sound like a bad wheel bearing.

-Chap

 

OP, just curious: what tire pressures are you running at? Per Toyota spec, or significantly higher?

I've never heard so many reports of wheel bearing failure, grasping at straws.

I'm coming from a lot of Honda's, where CV joint failure was more common, FWIW.

 

I really am not savvy re bearings, but that seems a good price.

 

must be the slat.