Clearly audible whine developing... Help?

Hello,

My Prius just passed the 100k miles mark, but I only had a 100k km warranty anyway

It has recently developed a clearly audible whine from the front. I was fearful it was one of the electric motors but have learned it is directly linked to wheelspeed. I.e.: flooring it will only slowly increase the frequency of the whine proportional to the speed increase, not instantaneous to the motors RPM.

Scared as hell some expensive part is on its way out...

One thing I have also noticed is that it *seems* (very subjective) to accelerate slower than it used to and when accelerating full throttle (I am on a very, very tight schedule each morning due to the kids needing to be at two places 10 miles apart at the exact same moment...). It also has slight acceleration surges when doing this (full throttle acceleration), as in: you can feel it accelerating a little faster, then a little slower, then faster, etc. with a frequency of about once a second. It is a barely noticeable phenomenon, but I am convinced it is there.

Any thoughts, ideas on deeper analysis, things to check, etc. welcomed!

 

Drove by the dealer today and they determined while driving it was the right wheelbearing.
Then they drove it up the ramp, lifted the front wheels and had someone listen to it while they pushed down the throttle He confirmed again it was the bearing.


So:
Can I do this myself?
How does 250€ for the bearing and another 250 (2.6 hours according to them) for the fitting sound?

They claim I won't be able to get it off...

 

Thanks for the comments.
I am not afraid of handling essential components of cars or motorcycles (hell, I even MADE an ABS sensor from scratch from spare parts of the old one and one electronic component for ~3$ whereas a new one is over 350$...).

The fact I have to ask is simply because I have not done it before on a Prius and have no service manual, so I rely on the experience of others to judge how much ingenuity and experience is needed.
I recently replaced the rear disks, all pads (easy) and the front control arms (lot less easy, driveshaft got dislocated and needed to be pulled) on my Volvo with quality aftermarket parts and thus saved about 1500$ in dealer profit and mechanic-hours. Maybe I am misjudging, but this doesn't sound much more difficult.

But if the general consensus here is only to use the real Toyota part, I can save 250€ by doing it myself, or possibly ~125 by going to a local shop. I am not sure that is worth the hassle.
Will try to get a second opinion. Am sick and tired of dealers advising me to replace parts randomly... (Like the Volvo sensor that had oil in the electrical connector which would "cause severe problems"... The new one had oil in it again within 3 weeks!!! I could try to write what I think of them (this is just one example), but the swearfilter would probably block the majority of my comments...)

My father-in-law has a 1 meter long 3/4" torque wrench without any sockets, so if I can get the correct socket, I might give it a go to see if I can loosen the nut.

 

Ok, so now I am confused... SKF is by far the most well known bearing manufacturer in my country with outstanding credentials. The SKF wheelbearing is ~70euro's as opposed to the Toyota one (which very likely may also have an SKF bearing) which is 250euro.

I am willing to shell out a little more for Toyota parts, but can anyone explain this difference?
Or is this not the complete unit Toyota sells?
Since the bearing gave out after 100k miles, I guess Toyota parts aren't infallible either

 

Finished.

The bearing came in a SKF box, but had a KOYO stamped bearing in it, exactly the same as the (presumably) original one I removed. (I forgot to actually check type/serialnumbers)

I borrowed a slide-hammer to get it out, as it didn't want to come out

But it still didn't work (pulled the bearing apart, so part still stuck in the aluminium wheelthinghy), so in the end I took the entire part to the Toyota dealer and they used the hydraulic press to remove it (as they do with their own repairs). I wined about it needing an alignment, but they said: "nah...", meaning they probably don't do it themselves either... I did measure the camber-bolts and made sure they had the same angle. It goes far better in a straight line than my recently aligned Volvo (~150$ 4-wheel alignment due to AWD, but they didn't need to align the rear wheels...)

Some pics:


Detatch the three bolts from the bottom steering ball joint and leave the rear attached, then you can slide out the driveshaft already. This took me hours and hours on my Volvo and just a few minutes on the Prius...

Just showing off the new one.

Things went far too smoothly. They never do normally... So here's what slowed me down: the oxidised aluminium layer that had no intention of letting go of the old bearing... So once the Toyota dealer had gotten it out with brute force (6 tons of force I think), we needed to remove a load of crud...



And if I had any doubt if I removed the correct bearing: here's the surface where the balls should run round.



Looks somewhat like crevice corrosion seen on measuring equipment I used to make, but not a clue how this would come about in a bearing...

Father in law asked if I did some welding (huge currents in electronic welding can cause small arcs in a bearing which might damage the surface). But I didn't, and I doubt the previous owner did this.

Any ideas how this can happen?

 

Hammer would have worked. But since I had borrowed a slide-hammer and tore the bearing apart, I had to return the slide-hammer to a local garage anyway. He gave it a shot with his press, using huge wrench-nuts (or whatchamacallit) to try and find a good diameter circle to distribute the force and he kept upping the pressure until he didn't want to increase it anymore on account of it only being aluminium... After a few tries, I told him I'd go to the toyota dealer instead if he felt hesitant at all to go on.

They (Toyota) were not that happy to see me, as I had gotten their 500€ quote and said I would do it myself and now needed their help anyway . I asked them two hours before if they had a special tool for it and he then mentioned using a press. I had then said: oh, so if I can't get it out, I can come here with the entire part? I doubt he was offering the help but I construed it as such...
They still did it, took about 10 seconds on the press (with a standard correct sized disk to distribute the force), and I didn't even have to help clear the bearing-balls that were all over the place afterewards... And they didn't charge anything for it. Making this really a 68€ repair instead of a 500€ repair. (excluding my hours obviously...)
Including the front disks and pads, and driving to the (independant and Toyota) garages two times, it took me a little over 6 hours.

 

Number two is going.....going.....gone. (~205,000km)

But it will have to survive some 400km more before the replacement gets in.

The part I payed 68euro for in 2014 is now 118euro. I should have ordered two last time... as I knew it was stupidly cheap (but had some doubts about quality).

 

Hell on earth...

Left the left hub at the Toyotadealer for the bearing to be pressed out. Took this time to have a look at the ABS sensor on the right side since my cruise control drops out sometimes on slight bumps on the highway (approximately since replacing the wheelbearing mentioned in the beginning of this thread, so assuming it is linked to that doesn't seem like such a stretch). Put the 10mm socket on the bolt and before even properly grabbing the wrench, the bolt snapped off.

To make a long story short: I removed the complete steeringknuckle AGAIN and even contemplated removing the wheel bearing (two years old) but feared it wouldn't survive. Had someone drill out the bolt, which is a pain as the flimsy dustshield cannot be removed unless you remove the bearing and the snapped bolt is very hard to reach. I now only have 2 or 3 turns thread left, so will glue the new bolt in place.

A 2-3 hour job turned into a 2 day job and is still not finished.

Good advice to anyone working on his ABS sensors:

REPLACE THE BOLTS!!!