Wheel Bearings

My local garage charged £55 for rear wheel bearing. Ford must have a big problem that they are not telling owners about as my car has had both rear bearings collapse and its not done 25,000 mile yet !

Dunno where in the world you are, but here in the USA Ford had a very well publicised recall on the Focus for defective rear wheel bearings. My 2000 Focus wagon's rear wheel bearings were replaced at no cost to me.

duh... other than somewhere in the UK :)

In Sweden they give three years extended warranty on the rear wheel bearings. Parts only, no labour. Both of mine are done. But then you don't get the repair guaranty that Swedish Ford gives otherwise, since you don't pay for the parts. In Sweden, if the part fails while the owner who paid for the repair still owns the car, it will be fixed again for free. (Does not cover wear parts though, but wheel bearings are not wear parts according to my garage). There you have it, if it makes any sense. /per

"Peter Marshall" skrev i meddelandet news:vJWmb.1739$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfep1-win.server.ntli.net...

Hi again

Thanks for the replies!!

I jacked up the car today and did the standard wheel bearing test i.e. grab the wheel at 12 and 6 - no movement at all. Is it possible to perform the same test on the rear wheels?

You all talk about rear wheel bearings - When I'm driving I get a fairly high pitched noise, sometimes it's really noisy sometimes not quite so bad but it's always there. If I dip the clutch or knock the car out of gear completely the noise stays, I thought this test would eliminate the gearbox - does it?

I have also noticed that the car idles very erratically sometimes nearly stalling. On a recent long trip down the motorway I noticed several missfires.

The car has only done 24k

Thanks again

Mick

I'm having a rear wheel bearing done under warrenty this week on my 4 yr old focus only done 28000 mls

As I understand the recall, the wheel bearings aren't bad, but the seals can be. In bad climates with road salt, the seals can let this in and cause corrosion and bearing failure. So, the recall was to replace the seals - maybe the bearing too while they are in there, in casre they are corroded.

Your bearings sound ok to me...it sounds like your issue is transmission whine.

My Camry just had a rear wheel bearing fail (185K miles) and it was very noisy and rumbling like driving on a gravel road. I jacked the rear up and spun it and it was easy to feel/hear that it was bad. The other side was quiet and spun longer too. I took off the brake drum and the hub would "catch" at certain points when turned. It had no excessive play at all, so that won't always tell you if it is bad. It can though, as a Honda I had had ALOT of play before it was replaced.

If you step on the clutch or coast in neutral, much of the transxle is being turned by the driveshafts...so one would have to remove them and push the car to take the tranny out of the equation! I beleive this is the cause of your whine. My Focus has this same high pitch whine from when it was new and I hear it in neutral or in gear too, from highway speeds right down to

10 mph. It changes a bit when you chenge the throttle too - changes the gear loading. It changes pitch with speed and it is in the transaxle. My bet is it is the way the diff gears are set up for backlash or the gear design and it has not got worse but if I drive w/o the radio, it annoys me. I mentioned to the dealer before the end of warranty but of course they felt it was normal. I meant to drive another car but didn't. From what I read on the newsgroups and net, it may be a "feature" of many of these gearboxes and not easy to get rid of. Some have replaced their 5 speeds with no fix to the problem. As long as the tranny lasts, I will be happy. I now have 41K miles.

As to your idle problem, I would start by cleaning the thottle body/throttle plate of carbon (I use a rag damp with thottle body cleaner) and check/clean the idle air control. Other than that, it could be a sensor, like the throttle position sensor, but most sensors, if bad, will set a check engine light these days.

Gary