Does it make sense to replace front bearings at 95K miles?

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Care, Maintenance & Troubleshooting' started by gatorback, Mar 19, 2026 at 4:29 PM.

  1. gatorback

    gatorback Junior Member

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    2010 Prius: The right rear bearing began failing at 95K miles: both rear bearing assemblies were replaced last week at 95.2K miles.

    Given the rear bearing failure, does it makes sense to change out the front bear assemblies? I suspect that if one goes, then that may very will be harbinger what is to come in the very near future.
     
  2. BiomedO1

    BiomedO1 Senior Member

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    Not really; IMHO - they last a long time; if they aren't abused. The right side usually goes, because you keep bashing them against a curb. Parallel parking and curb rashing them. It's the sideways pressure on them that takes them out. I've seen cars that go 500+K miles without replacement and I've seen some that don't make it past 40K miles.

    YMMV
     
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  3. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Yeah, in my gen 1 by 238k miles I had replaced only two, and those years and tens of thousands of miles apart.

    People sometimes get too caught up in "they have the same expected time to failure"—that is, the center peaks of some probability distributions all line up—when those distributions are such wide, squat curves that it just makes more sense to fix the ones that go.

    It's different for things like internal engine parts, where you'd replace a bunch of things together so you only do the long disassembly and access work once. But wheel bearings, changing 4 of them is just pretty much 4× the work of changing 1, so may as well change each one only if needed.
     
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  4. CR94

    CR94 Senior Member

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    The other major threat to wheel bearings is water intrusion. I replaced the left front bearings of my Mazda three times for that reason, but no others in that car or any other car I've owned in nearly 900k total miles.
     
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  5. BiomedO1

    BiomedO1 Senior Member

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    I don't know how you got water intrusion into your wheel bearing assembly. Some sort of manufacturers defect? I've only seen that in lifted 4x4 that do a lot of water crossings. We usually sell them differential oil changes and sometimes ATF changes too. The water gets in through the breather tube, at the top of the unit. Pretty obvious, since the oil becomes milkshake.o_O:cool:
    We usually have to educate those guys. Just because their feet are dry, doesn't mean their SUV is OK.
     
    #5 BiomedO1, Mar 19, 2026 at 6:38 PM
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2026 at 6:44 PM