Last week I noticed an unpleasant noise while taking a sharp corner. In the last week I have put 500+ miles on the car and I hear the noise getting louder. I notice it most in highway on or off ramps. My perception is that it is worse in right hand turns, but I definitely hear it in left hand turns. I only hear the noise at high speeds, it isn't there no matter how hard I corner at 15 MPH so I assume it is a wheel bearing and not a CV joint.

How do I determine which wheel it is?

I see bearings at $75 and "hub assemblies" for $100 at Rock Auto. At the moment I am short on spare time; is it faster/easier to change the hub assembly? I assume this means not having to press the bearing in or out, right?

How sudden is the failure of this bearing? If I started hearing the noise 500 miles ago am I living on borrowed time? Or can I put it off until next weekend?

TIA

 

for one be sure if its in the front or rear, the easy way to determine which it is is by loading that bearing ,turning side to side, when the side that sounds the worse with the load on it is in most cases the problem. i have seen them sound like it is on one side but its on the other so if you are still not sure you can always lift the front up put it in drive and listen to both sides hope this helps

 

it sounds like it is most definitely your wheel bearing. i think it would just be easier for you to replace the entire assembly at once after you figure out which bearing is bad. i know my parents put it off for a pretty long time and didn't realize it was a problem on their 98 accord till i was home from college one weekend, so you can probably wait till the weekend. just try to get it done asap.

 

Stupid me, bought the bearing and not the hub assembly. I banged out the bearing with a hammer, the inner race is attached to the hub that has the splined input and the studs for the wheel. I see no possible way to seperate the bearing inner race from the splined hub, no feature to grab onto and no place to press onto. Any suggestions?

 

My local autoparts store was charging me $40 to press in the new bearings. You can check with your local autoparts store to see if they can fix your hub.

 

I did this before on my Accord. I had to use a press to seperate the race.

http://vic.doitbig.org/dsmtalk/whlbrg/23.jpg I found that picture of Google images so here you go. It's a seperator tool. I used it before and works like a charm. Took off my race with ease. But you might have to hammer the tool in to get a good grip on it.