Do worn wheel bearings affect brake performance?

Stephen wrote:

the wheel bearing may affect the 'grab' of that brake, but you might not
notice in normal use, so yes, the bearing may well sort both problems, but
.......  You won't know till you fix it.  A friend of mine has a Passat with
300k on the clock, he went through front wheel bearings quite quickly till
he found a better make.  Unfortunately I am not in touch with him at
present, so I can't find out the make.  The originals lasted well though, so
if they are not ludicrously over priced get genuine.

Wow, A speedy reply Mr Cheerful....

The VW price for original bearings is £40.45p which is actually not that
much more than Eurocarparts or GSF.

I'm happy to get the VW bearing at that price.

I would normally do my own car maintenace but the biggest challenge for me
is getting the old bearing out..Taking it out breaks the bearing in two, so
leaving one half to extract out of the wheel hub/ABS sensor assembly, and
one half out of the hub carrier. And of course pushing in the new bearing.

VW have quoted two hours labour, and are offering 12.5% discount off the
bearing and 20% off their labour rates as apparently the older the car is,
the bigger the discount gets..... making it 214 quid all in.  Isn't that age
discriminantion? :-)

I've looked online for a bearing tool but cant seem to find the right one
let alone the right place. I found a forum in the states where golf owners
hire the special tool....

So what do I do, pay the VW dealer or buy the tool to use as a one off and
then flog on Ebay or keep for the next bearing job?

Still seems a low mileage for a bearing to go

Stephen

Stephen wrote:

most garages would just use a general purpose press to change the bearing,
if you can remove the relevant bits then most places would probably press
the bearing in and out for less than twenty quid.

wrote:


You can get a large puller kit to remove the bearing in situ, Sykes want=
  =

about =A3300 (08120000), Sealey(VS7020/vs7021) about =A3150, last time I=
  =

pushed one out the hydraulic press read 8T before it moved so I'd go wit=
h  =

Mr Cheerfulls suggestion

On 11/06/2011 7:27 PM, Mrcheerful wrote:

I would say that with the bearing having movement this would force the
pads to retract and give a soft peddle till the pads contacted the rotor
again. So the peddle would vary.

Talking of bearings, as a materials scientist, i just remembered who makes
the best quality bearings, its a firm called SKF in the Netherlands

There is a specific compostion of iron alloy which not surprisingly  called
bearing steel that SKF's bearings are made from.

Regards

Stephen

On 14/06/2011 6:34 AM, Stephen wrote:

SKF are made in various countries. Do they all use the same materials or
the same specifications in manufacture?

On 2011-06-13 22:34:01 +0200, Stephen said:


You ask if it is normal for bearings to fail after only 70K. Well, in
normal use, everything else being okay, then this is unlikely. But
wheel bearings can go extremely quickly if they are subjected to
repetitive stress. A badly balanced wheel, for instance, will ruin a
wheel bearing.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
saying something like:


From my experience as a user and maker, the best made are Toyo.
I used to make the balls in a local plant - SKF are good, no doubt about
it, but the tolerances demanded by Toyo were tighter than those accepted
by SKF.
RHP were the worst.

On 11/06/2011 10:02, Stephen wrote:

How is a car supposed to brake in a straight line if the wheels are
wobbling all over the place ffs?