Yesterday when I had the front passenger wheel off, I noticed that there was about 1 or 2 cm of side to side play in that wheel. The suspension is all tight, so I assume that the wheel bearing is the problem.

Is that right?

 

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If you had the wheel off, what were you moving to feel play, the brake rotor? If so, the play could be the rotor moving. The rotor is held in place by the wheel lugs, which were off if your wheel was off the car.

See if there is any play in the front after your wheels are secured onto the hub.

 

With only that side of the car lifted and the wheel still on try to move the wheel.

Could it be you tie rod end links? My outer went bad at 90K.

 

This was after I had put the wheel back on.

 

It could be that your Control Arm bushing is finished, when mine was done I could pull the pass wheel 2-3" without much effort.

 

Eric, I've got the same problem.

Did you replace your axles by any chance? If the axles were made a little bit longer than they should be, then they will push against the inner bearing hub and force it outward when the suspension travels upward. The hub takes the outboard half of the inner bearing race along with it and a gap opens up between the two inner race halves, resulting in loose wheel bearings and the resulting wheel slop you detected.

This can also happen if you have replaced the bearings and the outer race was pressed too far into the steering knuckle. This is what happened in my case. Or maybe a combination of new axles and new bearings, since I noticed the problem not long after I had replaced both the front axles and the wheel bearings.

 

For a correct wheel bearing test, you are supposed to check for play holding the wheel at 12 and 6 o'clock.

 

I have never _replaced_ the axle, but I did rebuild it. When I replaced my engine (just over a year ago) I accidently seperated the inner CV-Joint on the passenger side axle. I re-assembled, re-greased and re-booted it.

As I said, this was over a year ago and this is the first sign of trouble that I've found.

Factory bearings still (98k miles)

 

Which is what I did.