Is it dangerous to drive with a bad wheel bearing?
 

How much of a priority should replacing my bad wheel bearing be?

I'm doing it now, and have been for the past 6+ months, its an uneasy feeling.

Best to replace as soon as possible, but depending on the severity of it, you maybe able to drive on it for quite a while.

I gotta change mine cause its worrying me:noes:

what are the signs of a worn wheel bearing?

for me, an audible wobbling like noise, and excessive vibration from the dead peddle area + in general.

One way to tell is ginding noise from up front. The bad bearing will create excessive heat could warp your hub also. It could cause the wheel to fall off in an extreme case. It is not something to ignore for long.

hold the top and bottom of tire and move/tilt it up and down. if it has to much excessive play, than replace it. some car need a little play to flex. if you don't fix it, sooner or later it will come off.

and it not fun to be at the side of the road at 2am trying to get your wheel that went flying forward into someones yard at the side of the street. Then try to jack up your car that is resting the rotor on the concrete.


what a night that was. . .:rotz:

i had bad wheel bearings in my last car before the max. couldnt fix it for a while cause i didnt have the money due to a tight budget. so here goes. symptoms...

youll hear a grinding sound as you drive straight
you might hear the CV Joint pop when making REALLY NARROW turns
like someone said before, jack up the car and youll have more than a few mm's of play when you try to move around the tire
if you look at your brakes youll se their worn unevenly
if you brake while making a turn youll hear the brakes grind LOUDLY

long term consequences (3 to 4 months)...

bad CV joints
prematurely worn brakes and a brake pedal that will travel all the way to the floor (its not the master cylinder its just your jacked up brakes)
could overheat and warp the hub & knuckles
ridiculous uneven wear on your tires
damaged tie rods/alignment

and my personal favorites...

1) could put so much pressure on the wheel studs/nuts from all the play in your tires that your studs would break off or even the outer end of your CV Joint
2)horrendous gas consumption from all the drag/grinding on the bearings


so yeah fix it as soon as you can man
but thats just me
:)
dont ride on them too long

excessive heat is correct.
Wear on brakes? it wont have an affect on the braking system. I am able to brake quite fine with no loss after too many months of a bad wheel bearing.
Tire tread is just fine, it wont change your Toe as it doesnt really move anything.
gas consumption has been optimal, the bearing still move but are bad/offsett what ever the case and will cause a noise/+vibration. I made a 3.5hr trip on this same bad wheel bearing and got the same good asss gas milage I always got when I made the trip before.

Still best to get it replaced as soon as possible, dont leave yourself open to anything bad happening as a result of this.

It might be ok to drive around town on a bad bearing for a while, but it is really a dumb thing to not fix it because of all the reasons other orgers already mentioned. But I have one more thing to say: do NOT take it on a high speed long run, because bad bearings get very much worse really quickly at high speed, and then they're likely to be coming with a zip-up bag to take you away...

Word. Plus, the excessive wobble of the rotor pushes the caliper pistons back, so it takes more brake-pedal travel to engage the braking pads. Very scary at high speed emergency stops.

Jae

where's a good place to buy a new one?

So I guess what you guys are saying is that its not even worth thinking about basically?

Dealership.
Jae

get the bearing from autozone, and the HUB will have to be bought from nissan which i think is like 129.00 not sure. i just had to have mine replaced. sometimes the you can use the original hub but depending on how long you drove on the bad bearing you will more than likely have to change the hub. PITTMAN AUTOMOTIVE change my hub and bearing for $75 and only have the car for about two hours.

Replace the bearing ASAP. For the money you spend now, you will save heaps later when the problem multiplies and you have to fix more than just the bearings.

So I'll have to replace the hub as well as the bearing?
I really do appreciate everyone's input.

yes replace hub and bearing.


I dont want to deal with all of that and will just throw a whole new spindle on and call it a day. Either way works

Yeah, what's the deal with the hub? It's too bad parts stores don't sell reman'd hubs with new bearings like some cars. I guess for the DIY'r, we are left to get bearing and hub and have the bearings pressed in by a shop? Can the dealer do this right from the get-go so I don't have to shop around. What about seals, do they come with the bearings?

I suggested getting the bearing from Nissan, tho it's $20 more, cuz the Autozone ver doesn't have a warranty.

Jae

I spent $60 on a spindle at a junkyard that had a 30 day warantee and havent had a problem yet.

umm its a possibility i just suggest getting it changed as soon as u can.

Please post part numbers for hub and bearing from Nissan Dealer.

Can I put the bearing into the hub?

Was that just the hub? Did you pop a bearing into it?

I don't know if my problems/noises are from either my passenger side axle or wheel bearing. Or both...

It was for the whole spindle assembly so it has everything.

Crap now im nervious well i know what im doing this weekend. just one question, sorry to jack your thread but do you have to change the hub as well?? money is very limited and id like to get this done this weekend cause now im going to be paranoid.

it all depends on how long you have been driving on a bad bearing. If it just started then you should be fine, but if its been like that for a wheel the bearing has been getting to hot and can either cut grooves in into the hub like it did mine, or it could bore it out to a bigger size which wont let the new bearing fit tightly

On Friday I ordered my rear Hub (with ABS) from Car-parts.com for $60 shipped. The hub has 106K miles on it.

car-part.com is a good source to get the rear hub. Any other place charges an arm and a leg.

bad bearings
 

When I had this problem, it didn't make any noise until the ball bearing housing cracked. It sounded like a lot of pennies in my hub cap... except I have rims. Eventually it evolved into a grinding sound and my mpg went down drmatically. You can drive on it indefinetly as the design of the hub assembly will keep it pressed together. I would not recomend that at all. You should get it changed asap because if it seizes you will have to get a new hub, and the cheapest i've found one is $99 on ebay.

knows the feeling....

happened to you too:eek:

i sitll dont know what cause it but it a few lugs snapped and the rest spun off?

I blame supernatural forces that felt like shaking me :o

my friend and i were driving on I 290 in mass and were hit by a rogue wheel that flew of a vw because of a berring that wasnt fixed when it was suppised to be. get it fixed soon.

hit by a wheel?!?!?! fwack!! where did it hit the car?

I would have been pissed!! (if there was damage)

I had the same thing happen to me, my lug studs started snapping off on the 15, tire started wobbling ridiculously. They were doing construction, so there was no should or exit for 3 miles, so I had to drive it.

well i think i have a bad wheel bearing... on the driver side front wheel there is a whining noise, kinda like whistling sound, cant really explain it. any one have any ideas, i have no wheel vibration, no uneven brake pads, just that really annoying sound. u guys think its the wheel bearing?

I had an old Supra a long time ago and was crusin down the road (hi-way) one day and saw a tire coming right for me - from a truck! An 18 wheeler lost a rear tandam and the tire was coming through the median, hit the shoulder and bounced over my A pillar. Scared the crap outta me! I saw it just as it was leaving the truck and all I could think was "floor it damn it!"

Yeah Im pretty sure i have the same noise as you, hard to explain lol

High pitched, squeaky, grinding noise sort of...
When i brake and the car comes to a stop it really sounds like a creaky door closing/opening.

Coming from the front driver side, the garage guy did a visual inspection and said everything looks fine... but i KNOW something is really wrong.

Also once in a while when i turn my steering wheel completely it makes a bassy thud, like something is about to break...

If anybody knows what the hell is goin on it would be greatly appreciated!

mine was soo bad. When i jacked my car up the wheel was lop sided.. Replaced it along with my balljoints

Jack the car up, support it and grab a hold of the tire. Shake it back and forth at 12 / 6 and at 3 / 9. If you have excess play in all directions, it's a wheel bearing. If you have play in only one direction (i.e. 3 / 9) then it could be a worn tie rod end (inner or outter). There shouldn't be hardly any movement from the wheel - as in 'loose' feeling. The play in our wheel bearings is (IIRC) 0.002" of play.