Car or truck howling noise when driving? How to evaluate your wheel hub bearings.

wow do you hear that noise whoa is that thing loud [Music] can't turn the radio up because you can't ignore it that's a really important symptom that happens quite often nowadays in anything from suvs to cars passenger cars to one ton trucks yeah i'm talking about wheel bearing hubs and you can't ignore them because it could be bad end results that you do hey everyone sue for more auto so now that we've road tested this and heard the noise which you heard i want to show you how you can diagnose it without any tools you just need a jack or lift but if you jack up the wheel that you feel you're getting the noise from if not check both i already checked the other side the other side's fine so you also want to check your front end out because even though i'm 90 sure it's a wheelbarrow you need to be sure it's wheeler plus you want to you don't want to order parts and put all the stuff in and then find out you have another front-end issue so check your front end out that way you can order everything at once and we have great parts at 1auto.com to do all of this wheel bearings are like one of our biggest sellers because they're amazing and they're not expensive now there are two symptoms for wheel bearing pretty much you can have howl and then you're going to have wobble so the howl always starts way before the wobble the howling is when the bearings are starting to separate because that hub is coming out of that bearing shank in the center and the wheel bearing is like sometimes it runs out of grease because of the age of it the grease just dispersed away from the heat of years of it abuse driving hidden potholes don't hit those potholes god i hate bottles hitting potholes it just causes so much friction and damage it's too much weight the weight of the vehicle and those bearings when they were designed i'm sure we're not designed to take excessive beating from hitting potholes going over speed bumps too fast so they give away it's like we're done we're done with our job you abused us and they'll start to howl so every once in a while even though you like your tunes cranked you like the music i love the music just take five minutes for yourself drive without music drive without a phone and just listen to your car and you're like hey i've never heard that noise before do some research you might actually have howling happening and you're going to want to catch it before the wheel starts to wobble because that could be unsafe so let me just show you real quick this the visual what a wobbly wheel bearing looks like and as you can see here that's what a wobbly wheelbarrow looks like that is after the fact they heard howling for a while and they let it go so that howled and shook because that wheel bearing was wasted so then we have the opposite with no play in the front you could even hear it over the music of course if you played it at normal decibel but you could hear that howl and you would actually hear and feel that actually in the flow board because it's vibrating up through that knuckle and through that subframe so you're going to feel that right through the frame of the vehicle on your feet not so much the seat because there's no shaking yet no it wasn't loose it was just howling so let's check the front end out check the wheel bearing now how to diagnose this you want to turn the wheel and hold on to a control arm or a strut spring if you have a truck and you don't you only have a control arm hold on to that and you're going to get an actual vibration right through that knuckle and up the knuckle shaft to the ball joint to the control arm if you don't have an upper control arm it's going to go right up through the strut and what happens is if you need help you can get someone to turn it for you i can hear it but you can also feel it it's growling right into my hand so i know this wheel bearing's done it's toast we need to do it what is a wheel bearing a hub style i'm going to show you right now real quick so here's an old hub wheel bearing style this is the bearing and it's pressed onto what they call the hub that has your lug nuts this has an abs sensor in it there's the actual harness which goes in picks up this little thing right here let me see if i can get you a better view of it so this is what the hub missing so the lug nut part is called the hub that piece is missing these are the sealed bearings in front inside the seal and this is the abs ring right in there see all those little teeth each one of those notches sends a magnetic pulse to this magnet which has wires in it goes to a plug sends back an open close open close open close pulse to the pcm this mounts right here sometimes you'll get an abs code right and someone says to you ah we have to replace your wheel bearing because some of these only come with a wheel bearing this one is bolted on but you might not be able to get this at all even from the manufacturer that's because they want that to come with the wheel bearing if that's gone bad and it's on an obvious broken wire if that magnet's broken more than likely inside this actuator ring it's probably got a crack in it it probably came up and cracked the magnet so it's best to do them as a pair found a hub because i wanted to really show you guys what a hub looks like without the bearing pressed on it and here we are so there's the splines in there and that's usually for cv axle that goes in and the cv axle nut goes on that clean surface of an hub where that gets pressed into this bearing now this is an old bearing but i wanted you to see what it looks like when it's inside the knuckle so these are hub bearings that are bolted on and these are hub bearings that are pressed on so another race there's a hat this is called a race and that sits right in here in those bearings and then that seal holds it in there but when you press out an actual hub this race that you see on this side actually gets stuck on this hub so when you press it out use a press machine press it out now your hub has this race stuck on it and you've got a brand new bearing and you're like oh i got to put the hub back on there so i can drive down the road now you have to take that race off which if you have torches or you have access to a good vise you can heat it up without trying not to do any damage and it will enlarge from the heat gets soft and you can pop it off sometimes it just hammers right off but if you cause a mark at all on this hub when it goes back in there you will be doing damage to this bearing it will have play it could spin in place for the price of buying the hub separate and a preston bearing separate together we offer the kits at the 1a auto site that is why we offer the kits because it's not worth your time your time is valuable don't forget that brand new brand new and no waste of time press it together put it on your vehicle and down the road you go this is exactly what it looks like all together that's the back side your cv shaft goes right in there and this is the bearing part that spins so another thing i really got to talk to you about because in this industry i've been doing this for 36 years and i have seen qualified mechanics and techs just ignore this and it's not helping you out so i want you to understand when you do this you want to do it the correct way and that is this axle nut how it goes through that hub i showed you what a hub looks like this piece is pressed on to this piece that has that steel shank right in there in the center of that bearing what's holding these two together other than being pressed in but they need to be bolted in so when that axle goes through that spline and comes out the other side it looks just like that you're going to put that axle nut on and you are not going to reef on it when i mean that that's a mechanic term for taking your socket and you don't do that because now you're taking that bearing and you're pressing it too tight what happens you'll end up with a howl these bearings get friction and they get overheated because now they need a certain amount of play to do their job and if you over tighten it in this position tighter is not better okay you have to do it by proper spec and our hubs all come with the manufacturer's spec this one happens to be 184 foot-pounds so i strongly recommend you can either purchase a torque wrench borrow a torque wrench and they even rent them over torquing or under torquing will damage your wheel bearing so make sure you do it properly when they become bad these right in here will get sometimes they get play and sometimes there is no play and to check it for play you simply grab your tire i say noon and six o'clock and you're going to go back and forth oh this play there sue yeah but i know that doesn't feel like a wheel bearing so that's why i'm going to check the whole front end out so by doing this look at this upper ball joint this is why you have to do a whole front end check and don't just replace one part because you're kind of chasing your tail right look at that now will that contribute to other things yeah this needs to be tight and doing its job absorbing the shock from the road so that this bearing doesn't have any more stress on it that it already has so we want to do an upper control arm or just a ball joint if this ball joint comes out separate then do just the ball joint which it does this thing is old and rusted but this is a bolt right through here and that ball joint goes up into the control arm i personally like shiny new things so i would do the whole thing only because it makes me happy but you don't have to now you're going to go side to side this way and you're going to check tie rod ends this has a power steering rack so it has interac inner tie rod ends and outer tower ends that feels fine all right so now that we see this wheel see how the whole wheel moves like this you can see that right and you're like wow that whole wheel's moving that is really what it looks like when the hub is no good if it's loosened up internally but we know it's the ball joint right so let me show you what the wheel would look like without any moving suspension parts so now on this side i've already checked it out so i know i have no ball joint tie rod end or wheel bearing play and i have no howl from this side so this is what it's going to look like if it's in good shape and you have no problems i'm going to grab this i can't move that wheel at all that is not moving that's a solid hub solid ball joint upper and lower the lower one you should check with the jack but i'm pretty sure it's fine no i'm just trying i checked it with a jacket it's fine so this is a solid front end of tightness this is the way we want to be on both sides so it doesn't cause tie wear shaking vibration going down the road so i hope you enjoyed this video about wheel bearing and hubs i know i enjoyed making it for you the sounds everything it's quite a fascinating little thing about wheel bearings isn't it but 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Channel: 1A Auto: Repair Tips & Secrets Only Mechanics Know

Views: 148,768

Keywords: acadia, accord, avalanche, cadillac, camry, car bearing, chevy, cts, ctx, diagnose wheel bearing, dodge, equinox, escalade, evaluate wheel bearing, explorer, f150, ford, gmc, grinding noise, honda, howling noise, noise when driving, noise when rolling, ram, sierra, silverado, suburban, tacoma, tahoe, toyota, truck bearing, tundra, wheel bearing, wheel hub, wheel hub bearing, wheel noise, yukon

Id: u812eBf5P94

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 10 2022