Retired Bill

Re: Installation of 2 RAYBESTOS 712353 Wheel Bearing & Hub Assemblies on my personal 2008 Honda Accord at 108. K miles, ... purchased at about 100,000 miles:

I had the Safety Features of my brake system, on my 2008 Honda Accord DISABLE by installation of two brand new rear Reybestos bearing/ hub units. The ABS (antilock brake system), the VSA (vehicle stability assist- akin to antilock when skidding sideways), and the Traction Assist systems ... were all DISABLED by two defective rear wheel hub/ bearing units I purchased new from Rockauto.com. While the basic brakes still worked, I had to drive with a below par brake system, including on gravel and on wet roads, ... until I figured out how to tackle this problem. ... I eventually documented "three" of the exact same specific Reybestos Bearings Defects (on 2 installed / plus one new 3rd unit obtained for repair, sent back to Rockauto when defect identified).


The Saying goes: Once or twice can be a mistake, but three times is a pattern! ... THEN add the implication of Raybestos Bulletin BPI 14-02! That bulletin is a pretty good piece of evidence that Raybestos knows there is a problem with the ABS encoder rings on their bearings, but they continue to sell such parts. SPECIFIC PROBLEM I found: The Raybestos Bearings' ABS Encoder Rings I encountered on three separate hub/ bearing units had too many magnetic lines which produced too many (approx 4 additional) AC millivolt pulses per revolution. ... A defect like that easily disabled important brake safety functions on my Honda Accord. The Honda Accord's ABS VSA computer simply CAN NOT calibrate with a defect like that! ... and the ABS & VSA systems were disabled. I documented this specific problem with an easily to repeat examine using an encoder reader card to see the magnetic lines; and a digital camera to obtain a magnified view of the Raybestos encoder rings as compared to old OEM encoder ring. Timken brand Bearings had encoder rings that matched the old OEM bearings I had pulled off and saved. Installing Timken fully resolved the problem caused by the Raybestos bearings.

I've included .jpg pictures as documentation of the lesson I obtained. I had to count the magnetic lines in the pictures I produced about a dozen times before believing what I was looking at! Blows me away it is apparently legal (???) to sell defective bearing that can disable important brake safety features of a vehicle. Hope someone else can learn form my story. I bet others can document similar defects after reading this, especially on bearing made in China like the Raybestos I encountered. I will be checking every ABS encoder ring on replaced wheel bearings from now on, no matter who made them.