I have a bad wheel bearing. "whompwhompwhomp" at low speed, bad vibration at high speed. If I turn left it's loud and vibrates, if I turn right, vibration goes away, noise goes away. The steering wheel is vibrating, not the seat of my pants. I am guessing front right bearing. What else should I do, and what does everyone else think?
Oh, it's not tires, tire balance, brakes, struts or bushings. Since this started, all those parts have been changed because of unrelated matters.
Steve
I consider the best way to check is if you can find someone who does wheel balance on the car. Just because you changed those other parts doesn't mean they are good. I have had the belt separate inside of new tires.
On car wheel balancing? What a novel idea, I'm going to call around.
Novel? That is the oldest and best method as far as I know but have not seen it done lately. There must be some mechanics around that still have that equipment. However, the last time I had it done that way was about
1968. That guy also watched the radio antenna, spun the wheel at about the equivalent of 80 mph and trimmed the weights untill the antenna did not vibrate.No way anymore on a fwd car, I used to do this on older Cadillacs in the
Can't you do it just the way it was done on rear wheel? Just jack it up and spin the wheel with the engine? Gotta be carefull not to go too fast. With one wheel it will spin at twice the registered speed.
Uh, why not? Your spinning the same parts on an FWD using a on vehicle balancer that you would doing the rears on a RWD auto. I know of two shops that still use on car balancing. Much better job as it also balances out the rotors,hub and some axle imbalance as well. Also comes in handy for checking tires for OOR and trueness.
You're gonna laugh at me. I had a bum tire. :(
One draw back to on car wheel balancing is you must make sure that when the tires are removed they are put back on in the same relation to hub. Also you can't rotate the tires now unless you rebalance again. That's why it's not that common these days.
Brian
I don't see that as a drawback. Just losing the benefit of the on car balance. most likely the axle will not make that much difference anyway. I remember we sometimes did a static balance using a front hub with all the grease out of the bearings.
It is easy to get off on the wrong track. A few years ago I swore that my power steering was going bad. It would hang up a little when first used in cold weather. Then it started pulling hard to the right and I was ready to change it out. First we swapped the front tires and it then pulled hard to the left. A belt had separated from the tread. The power steering lasted for the life of the car continuing to hang a bit when first used during cold weather.
I forked in a tire store 25 years ago working my way through college, it makes a difference most of the time when you move a tire that was dynamically balanced on the vehicle from front to back or side to side. Even if you rotate the wheel on the hub it can be felt if there is much weight on the tire and rim.
Brian
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