Help me get an idea why both rear wheel hubs went bad at 75,000 miles at the same time

2014 Prius 75,000 miles

Some info that might help you help me in case there’s something I need to stop doing:

- I use the parking brakes every time I park, (put the car in neutral, push down on the normal brakes and then push down the parking foot brake down as hard as I can with my left foot then release regular brake and put in park, shut off engine)

- Tires are a couple PSI lower than recommended.

- Tires are reaching their end of tread life. (5-4cm left)

- I avoid cracks and potholes all the time. (Irrelevant?)

- The age of the wheel hubs, seals and lubricant losing its shelf life? (Stock wheel hubs still on)

I can’t think of anything else.

Thanks.

 

It was starting to sound like I had an engine in the back of the car at speeds above 30mph, two weeks ago and the sound is getting more pronounced the more days I drive, then one week ago it threw DTC codes that my left hand and right hand rear ABS sensors were not detecting the correct gap (wheel hub is moving around). Starting to feel the vibration of it in my steering wheel as of yesterday.

 

I see, but does cranking the parking brake all the way down with the foot (I’m a big dude with strong legs) could make the parking brake plates push in the rotor assembly too much?

 

Not used to a foot parking brake so first time around using it, I probably couldn’t crank a hand brake that hard with just arm strength. Will stop doing that once I replace both the rear wheel hubs, hopefully these bad ones will last until next Sunday, going to be doing short trips only and using girlfriends car for work trips.

 

I replaced both wheel hubs myself, this is a formal update, they both failed at the same time, I live in Minnesota and don’t normally wash the underside of my car after long drives on salty or snowy weather. The hubs were completely seized with rust, the dust shields were starting to lose its material where it mates with the hubs, had to use a full metal hand mallet (all I had) to walk it loose with 10 minutes of banging on it with that mallet in the limited wheel well space from behind it while I was in front of it (only had a 2 ton jack and stands so was working from the outside of the car), dont even get me started on the lower (closest to the ground) slide pins on both sides of the caliper brackets, that took a culinary torch, a whole can of WD-40, pliers, flat head screw driver and hammer to get out of the brackets on each side, took me an hour of twisting, torching and hammering it out with the flat head. Cleaned the housing of the slide pins with lots of WD40 baths and constant stroking of it with needle file, butchered the bushings to the lower slide pins but greased the hell out of them so they can last and function until I get new bushing and slide pins ordered. This was my first real repair job, with limited tools and time. The whirring sound is gone from the rear once both failed-at-the-same-time factory wheel hubs got replaced. The ABS speed sensor christmas hud lights still persist because I forgot to unclip the rear left ABS wheel speed sensor from the hub before going to town on it with the mallet, I had removed the housing on the connector so the wires got pulled straight out of the terminal crimps in the connector, I put them back in the connector as best as possible in their respective slot for their colored wires (black and white) but that didn’t work, cleaning it with electrical contact cleaner wont work either because they need to be re-crimped (although I could try but ChatGPT says that’s now how it works) so now I need to get a new ABS wheel speed connector and pigtail because I don't have the knowledge or tools how to open those connectors up and re-crimp the wires to the respective terminals inside of the connector. I’m hoping that’s the issue with the 1 and only code left (LH rear wheel speed sensor fault) and the wheel hub sensor itself isn’t bad on the new hub I got from rockauto, the right rear wheel hub ABS speed sensor code went away after replacing the hub and clearing DTC codes, but the left rear one didn’t, it’d be rare if it was the actual sensor or plug of the new wheel hub that caused the code to persist rather than the connector and what I accidentally had done to it.

Only a 30 dollar mistake for my first real repair I think I did good.