problem with Hub/wheel bearing! Help - Toyota Nation Forum : Toyota Car and Truck Forums

rockhard · 08-03-2007, 12:47 AM

when I am cruising at about 15-20 kmh I can feel a bounce coming from the front right wheel. I can also see the car bouncing slightly too.
So I had the front of my car up on a lift the other day and I noticed that I could see a wobble in the wheel every time it spun around. not a side to side wobble, but up and down if that makes sense
I also took a look at the cv joint axel, which I recently replaced, the axel itself was fine. but where it mounts to the wheel/hub I could see it wobbling too.
could this just be a bent rim, my guess is its something to do with the hub or wheel bearing. If anyone knows what might be wrong pls help me out.
because im getting rims soon and next week Im supposed to be going on a trip thats over 200km and I cant trust my wheel like that

Kep · 08-03-2007, 01:48 PM

Do I understand that when the car is jacked up and you spin the wheel by hand that you see the axle connection to the wheel move up & down?

At first I thought the wheel might be unbalanced or your suspicion of a bent rim but that wouldn't account for the axle moving while you're just spinning it by hand. You mention that you just replaced the axle. How confident are you that it was reassembled correctly? I can't think of what may have been done to get this result but I lean toward the suspicion that something was done incorrectly and that it has been getting worse until now you can notice it.

You can jack the car up and brace a pencil so that it points at the rim. Rotate the tire and you will see if the rim is significantly out of true. Do the same for the hub may require a more sophisticated micrometer but if you can visually see the movement a stationary pencil might work for that too. Has the tire developed a wear pattern?

Don't drive too much with this situation. The constant bouncing will wear out the rubber suspension parts and they are expensive to replace.

Kep

fredk · 08-03-2007, 06:11 PM

sounds like its wheel bearing time

IvanHoe · 08-04-2007, 02:45 PM

get the hub......it comes with the bearing. If a bearing goes bad, chances are the hub has followed suit

rockhard · 08-04-2007, 09:38 PM

Ok I think now, that it is actually the alignment that is the problem, I did some tests like you said Kep.
I also pulled the wheel off to get a closer look at the cv joint axel where it mounts to the hub, and it was just the boot that made it look like it was wobbling/off center.
The center point of the rim doesnt seem to wobble or anything when I brace a pencil on it, the outer edge of the rim itself doesnt wobble either. they both seem to rotate pretty even.
When I looked closer at the tire, while it was spinning, the outer part of the tire seemed to wobble more than the inner side

IvanHoe · 08-05-2007, 09:30 AM

Sounds like the tire has gone bad....it's happenned to me a time or two......they can get warped or create a bulge on the tread that would cause exactly what you describe.

IvanHoe · 08-06-2007, 05:32 PM

This weekend I took a trip to western Mass. (about 4 hours each way), and I noticed that the steering wheel would vibrate about 65-70% of the time. The odd thing is that if I hit 65+ mph, it went away.... I got home thinkin that I had a bad tire.....well it turns out that 3 out of the 4 tires were in serious need of a high-speed balancing. Now all is well......My point is that most of the time it's not as serious as you might first think.