Hi All,
I have a problem that started up on my 94 T&C about a month ago that I am hoping for some advice.
When driving down the road I get a constant scrape scrape scrape scrape that is directly related to vehicle speed - the faster I go the faster the scraping sound. It's been getting louder and louder. If I roll down the road and put the transmission in neutral it makes no difference. If I gun the engine the noise does not change - it only changes in relation to wheel speed. If I turn the noise gets louder and I get more noises that sound like the brake pads are chattering against the rotors. I had my wife drive it around while I listened to it outside and it sounds like it was coming from the front.
So I figured OK it's a textbook shot wheel bearing. Simple enough. So this weekend I pull the front wheels off and go to remove both front hub & bearing assemblies. The left assembly comes out easily. The right assembly is frozen on the knuckle. I finally get a slide hammer out and succeed in pulling the center of the hub right out of the bearing center, then I hammer the hub sideways and manage to turn it enough in the knuckle to get a crowbar on it to pull it out of the knuckle.
So I figure, Easy stuff, the bearing must be shot, it overheated, expanded the hub which jammed it in the knuckle. Plus there's a lot more corrosion in the knuckle center then on the other side of the car, plus the grease kind of has that faint smell of burning.
So then, pleased with myself I hammer the hub back together and twist the hub, expecting to feel typical bearing roughness of a shot bearing. Only problem is - I DON'T!!!
The reassembled right hand hub turns as smooth as the left hand one. In looking at the races and ball bearings there's no evidence of gouging. It is true that everything is filthy, but this is a 150K mile car, what do you expect? There's no evidence of any hogged out bearing, it is completely solid and no movement except the hub's normal turning.
So now I'm kind of at a loss on what to do. I called the local NAPA that has a machine shop and they will press out the old bearing and press in a new one for $35, plus the cost of the bearing & hub kit which is $100. However if I pay them $135 for this and reassemble the car and I still get the scraping I will be hopping mad. And if I further take the left hand hub in and have a new bearing put in it and after reassembly I still get the scraping I will be swearing a blue streak. The last thing I want is to dump $260 into this and end up fixing nothing.
I suppose I could pry the hubs apart with a crow bar and slide hammer and wash everything down with mineral spirits really good then repack the bearings with fresh grease and see what happens - but I would hate to spend an afternoon with a toothbrush and a bucket of solvent and end up fixing nothing. This is one of those times I really wish I had an Arbor press!
The parts guy at NAPA said when these fail that the bearing seizes and the center spindle starts turning in the race which destroys the spindle, the $100 kit supposedly has all the parts to fix this. That clearly hasn't happend to mine.
I was thinking it might actually be a bad CV axle, but the only problem is when I replaced the transmission 8 months ago with a rebuilt one, I replaced both front axles, and there's no evidence of any problems like a split boot or any of that.
Anyway, what do you guy think, does this sound like a bad bearing?
Ted