My wife's cousin has a Focus four door appliance car. She drives like she is suffering from rectal cranial inversion and it sounds like a wheel bearing is worse for wear. I've researhed and found advice saying to replace the entire knuckle as well as others saying to have a machine shop R&R the bearings. I'm sure you guys have experience with this vehicle.
The car makes a howling noise in right turns and is silent in left turns. It also makes lane changes by itself. Given that info I would suspect the left front bearing since it's loaded in right turns. Does that sound correct? I know how to check the bearings once I have it lifted up but I want to minimize my time invested in this project.
Thanks!
Sounds about right. You can replace the whole knuckle or just have a new bearing pressed in.Of course you have to remove the knuckle for that.
Do I need to order the hub repair kit with that includes the hub and bearing or can I just buy the bearing itself and reuse the hub?
How expensive is the whole assembly? If it saves you time and isn't that much more money, I'd do the knuckle.
Give raxles.com a call for a price. He was a really nice guy and saved me a ton of $$ when my wife's Passat shat its front outers. It was cheaper to have him ship me 2 new axles than it was to get mine locally R&R'd.
AND, raxles is a GRM advertiser.
AND raxles is fun to say.
I will check it out. Rockauto says a Timken bearing is $28. Figure $8 to ship and maybe $50 for the machine shop to R&R (this is Orange County after all). Is a complete new knuckle going to be cheaper than $86?
raxles... it sort of rolls of the tongue
Well I drove it and jacked it up. The car pulls to the right but it feels more like an alignment issue than a wheel bearing bad enough to cause a problem. The bearing is definitely noisy in right turns so I'll order the front bearing and see how it turns out.
If you have a press you can R&R the bearing yourself. It's not a hard job. Getting the knuckle off and on again is a much bigger PIA.
Unfortunately I have not had clearance from the warden for a press yet. I'll have to do the hard work and pay someone else for the easy part.
I'll pick up a screw type ball joint separator (pickle fork will just damage the boot) and tie rod separator from Autozone rent a tool.
