Wheel bearings AGAIN !!

[Guy 1]

I bought the car october 2004 and i did all the brakes and suspension and exhaust and the cars been fine bar a few annoying little quirks the main one being it keep lunching wheel bearings.

I've had two rear and two front and now the fns has gone again !!

It's not a big hassle as I have press but it's an arse ache.

It's getting to the point where I am going to start carrying spare hubs.

I've had it tracked and four wheel aligned and it still does it.

The rear bearings have a tendancy to run dry however i pack the bearing and the front ones just start grumbling then tick then graunch.

Could it be the pot holes as we have a few where we live or the low profile tyres causing the wheel to track strangly. It's getting on my nerves now .

I have 16" split rim bbs rxII's with 205/45/16 yokohamas

Any ideas anyone ?

[kempj1 0]

What make of bearings did you put in? / where from?

Some of the aftermarket ones have a tendancy to be very soft compared to what you get from VW.

If you've had your alignment done recently there shouldn't be a problem with the car tracking strangely. 16" wheels shouldn't cause too much stress on the bearings - they obviously aren't mega-wide, so unless your alignment is way out then they should be fine.

Sounds a bit weird to me...

[Guy 1]

I used some unipart ones , ive never had an issue with them before this car though.

As it turns out the hubs buggered anyway and the bearing was spinning in it.

So, its off to get a new hub. Grrrr , how annoying.

[kempj1 0]

Unlucky! I'd advise Main Dealer for bearings - various posts I've read on this site say that folks have had a short & bad time with some 3rd party bearings. Not sure if that's got anything to do with your problem though. Good luck...

[Guy 1]

Well, it actually got worse, much to my frustration.

I whipped the hub off and my neighbour who works in a local garage says to me he'll pop the old bearing out for me and press the new one in, now im not keen on this guys work hes a bit slap dash for me and having been a snap on dealer I heard from the current dealer he had lots of call backs. But this aside its a wheel bearing, what harm can it cause?.............. he bent the lugs for the caliper carrier on the hub causing me all kinds of issues.

I quietly seethed and swore not to let him so much as look at the car from now on.

So monday morning arrived i chipped up at the local scrappies who hoard a secret supply of mk3s( lovely fellas )and had my pants royally pulled down for a straight hub with a yet another shagged bearing.

This time i pressed the bearing in myself at another mates workshop.

Finally it's all back together and all good, god what a proper drama!!

There is a moral here somewhere.

[kempj1 0]

Certainly sounds like there's a moral somewhere. This kind of thing's happened to me before - allowing people who you've got serious doubts about to do some work on your car. I've felt like a proper prat on a couple of occasions. I hope you get some decent miles out of it before you think about taking it back to the genius lug bender!

[Guy 1]

The worse thing is I have to continue being "normal" to the guy as he is the gamekeeper on the farm i have carte blanche to shoot on and dont want to spoil that privillage.

It's all back and safe again , plus i ran it on the brake rollers first just to be sure that nothing was going to snarl up or fowl, I'd rather it did it there than on the road when there are others possibly involved.

I smiled all the way home, enjoying the ride not listening to the rumble but to the warble of the six off the builings and trees, yup fun again.