Hi, Guest
08-15-2009, 02:38 AM
Here are my 2 cents
I have had my car fail twice because of the rear bearings and I'm sick of this, the car is 2001 with 115k and I will be doing my 3th wheel bearing replacement!!
The first time I had this problem I started to notice vibration problems and I though it was balance on the tires, I ran the car for 1 week and the vibration only got worse, how ever no noise at all which is strage, I raised the car and checked all the wheels and it turns out that the rear passenger side bearing got some how loose inside and the entire wheel looked like it would come out easy with a hard turn, that big nut that holds everything together to the spindle was Ok and tight but the bearing was just loose inside so there you go and had t replace 2 drums (best practice as I could replace only that damaged side). Some new drums usually come with the bearings pressed in, there are drums that do not come with the bearings but according to a Ford dealer it is best to by the drums with the bearings included as they say that pressing the bearings afterwards may damage the drum, go an figure that out but how do they do in on the assembly line in the first place. Anyways this first failure occurred 3 years ago.
The second failure I had just 2 weeks ago was because of regular brake maintenance, I noticed that the brake fluid level on the brake fluid deposit was getting lower and lower and faster every day it passed, so next step was find out where the leak is, inspected the fronts and found out that I needed to replace my front rotors and pads (I will never use cross drilled rotors again as the brake dust and derbis got stuck in to the holes and cause damage to the rotors themselves and the pads, that is a whole different topic long discussed in forums) along with new calipers as I've never replaced them since the car was new. Finished the fronts and went to the backs and found my leaking problem, the wheel cylinder on the rear driver side was gone and I found a mess in there!! Went to the other side and at the moment of pulling the drum BANG, the bearing broke and those drums just had only about 20k on them!! so this is my second rear wheel bearing failure.
The guy at next door is a service advisor at a Mazda dealer and he mentioned to me that he sees a lot of wheel bearing failures in their Mazda Protege and 3s which basically it is almost the same car as the Focus. So to "FIX" my problem I decided to upgrade my rear drum brakes to SVT disk brakes, at least with this setting I don't have to mess with the bearings when doing regular brake maintenance unlike the drums where you need to pull the whole thing out with the risk of damage to the bearings and spindle.
Not sure is some one else has had these problems or I just have had bad luck.
I have had my car fail twice because of the rear bearings and I'm sick of this, the car is 2001 with 115k and I will be doing my 3th wheel bearing replacement!!
The first time I had this problem I started to notice vibration problems and I though it was balance on the tires, I ran the car for 1 week and the vibration only got worse, how ever no noise at all which is strage, I raised the car and checked all the wheels and it turns out that the rear passenger side bearing got some how loose inside and the entire wheel looked like it would come out easy with a hard turn, that big nut that holds everything together to the spindle was Ok and tight but the bearing was just loose inside so there you go and had t replace 2 drums (best practice as I could replace only that damaged side). Some new drums usually come with the bearings pressed in, there are drums that do not come with the bearings but according to a Ford dealer it is best to by the drums with the bearings included as they say that pressing the bearings afterwards may damage the drum, go an figure that out but how do they do in on the assembly line in the first place. Anyways this first failure occurred 3 years ago.
The second failure I had just 2 weeks ago was because of regular brake maintenance, I noticed that the brake fluid level on the brake fluid deposit was getting lower and lower and faster every day it passed, so next step was find out where the leak is, inspected the fronts and found out that I needed to replace my front rotors and pads (I will never use cross drilled rotors again as the brake dust and derbis got stuck in to the holes and cause damage to the rotors themselves and the pads, that is a whole different topic long discussed in forums) along with new calipers as I've never replaced them since the car was new. Finished the fronts and went to the backs and found my leaking problem, the wheel cylinder on the rear driver side was gone and I found a mess in there!! Went to the other side and at the moment of pulling the drum BANG, the bearing broke and those drums just had only about 20k on them!! so this is my second rear wheel bearing failure.
The guy at next door is a service advisor at a Mazda dealer and he mentioned to me that he sees a lot of wheel bearing failures in their Mazda Protege and 3s which basically it is almost the same car as the Focus. So to "FIX" my problem I decided to upgrade my rear drum brakes to SVT disk brakes, at least with this setting I don't have to mess with the bearings when doing regular brake maintenance unlike the drums where you need to pull the whole thing out with the risk of damage to the bearings and spindle.
Not sure is some one else has had these problems or I just have had bad luck.