Can anyboby advise me on a good test to check for damaged front wheel bearings. The Max is steering kinda funky. Control arm including bushings look good on the driver's side, but one is beginning to rip on the passenger side. I do feel a little grinding in the steering intermittedly and a occassional sway all by itself. Tks in advance for the help.

Jay

 

No test per se. I like to just look and listen. Jack up the wheel and spin it freely. Without the load it may not make noise even if it's on its way out, but it's worth the try. Sealed bearings, in my experience, go bad pretty quick. Not a lot of middle ground. Listen for any type of frictional sound(i.e., grinding, humming, groaning). Remember to take the brakes into consideration, though. It's more an experience thing. Nothing like being self taught. Jump in.

Edit: I'd replace those control arm bushings, too. It's amazing what symptoms they cause when they wear out.

 

Jack it up and try to wiggle the wheel around. Look behind it at the balljoint while doing so to see where the freeplay is, if any. If the balljoint dosnt show any, but the wheel wiggles a bit in relation to the steering knuckle, it's your wheel bearing. A new bearing is 40$ from autozone, 30 minutes to remove the hub/steering knucke, and 20$-30$ for any local machine shop to swap out the bearings.

 

jack your car up. try to shake the tire/rim. if there's play you might have to replace either bearings or balljoints. i'd go with ball joints first. easier to take off.

 

mine steered funny with worn bushings. Fixed with new lower control arm with bushings. Then again, really bad alignment, bad tires, etc can cause problems.

 

Good advice,

Driver's side bearing was bad, I jacked up the car and wiggled the wheel
from the top and bottom, to much play. Did the same thing on the passenger side and got no play. I went ahead and repalced wheel bearings on both sides including control arms for both sides. when my mobey gets right again, I will do the springs and struts. Steers 100% better.

tks

Jay

 

notices that even if the wheel spin smoothly by hand rotation, that doesn't really mean your wheelbearing is still in good shape. Try driving on the highway, if you could hear loud rubbing noises even at 70mph+, then it's officially bad.

 

Mine are terribly bad too! A downer for Nissan Maxima's front end play.

 

another suggestion, when your rotors are wrapped? (spelling?), it also create lots of annoying sounds too. Try identify whether the rotors are the source of problems first cuz wheel bearing are a lot tougher to mess around with. try identify the easier problem for a solution first before the WB one.

 

Warped.

 

What if the loud rubbing noise doesn't show up until after a long 70+mph dirve and then lingers for awhile after driving around town and then disappears all together? Almost as if it got hot on the highway, started making noise, and then went away after cooling down. My car started doing this after I replaced the ball joints and tierod ends.

 

After a long drive. touch the wheel. If one is alot hotter than the other, it could mean that side's bearings are shot. Jiggling the wheel is what I would do. But I'd also consider replacing the CA bushings with new ones or buy the whole thing from Internetautomar.

 

I sell the bushings too ya know