Alright.

My front wheel bearings were getting bad. I could feel them grinding when I was almost stopped and could feel them slightly grinding when I was rolling slowly, like under 5 mph.

I was planning to drive the car home to my dad's pole barn, where our floor hoist resides, but that isn't happening now.

I was driving yesterday to run some errands and go to class when I lost brakes right before stopping for a stop sign and the grinding is gone.

The wheel bearing is shot. I drove the car the last 1.5 blocks to my house and parked it there.

Anyone change out the wheel bearings on their own? I am sure someone has. I am probably going to call a friend of mine in the automotive program here at Ferris to come over and help me out.

I would consult my Haynes manual, but low and behold, it is in the pole barn 2 hours away.

Any advice provided will help. I was obviously told not to drive the car any longer b/c there is a chance the wheel could fall off and damage things worse than they already are.

 

This might help.
http://www.mazdatrix.com/faq/frontbrg.htm

 

You sure it's the wheel bearings and not the brakes?

 

well

The grinding problem would occur even when the brakes weren't touched. I stopped on a downslope and let the car coast at 2-3 mph and it would make a slight metal on metal "hiss" for lack of a better term.

I will be checking both today. I will give an update sooner than later hopefully

 

Gosh, hope you didn't mess up the bearing races in the hub.

James

 

If you damaged the hubs you are looking at almost a totaled car. You can find used hubs at a junk yard if you're lucky. I would say check your brakes first. Take the calipers off of the rotors and spin the rotor around; any noise? can you wiggle the tire from top to bottom? Have you lost one of those little bust caps that go over the hub center?

I have changed my front wheel bearings once, and I do not want to do it again. It is not fun. This is why I say to check any other rotating mass on the front suspension before you mess with the bearings.

 

you need to change the bearing and the races together so it really doesn't matter if only one is damaged, he would need to change both anyways.

 

The bearings are totally shot. I was going to drive it home to fix, but it's not happening.

The thing is squeeling at 30 mph like a banshee. It is also starting to bind up after I stop. Kinda feels like it is trying to roll over a speed bump.

It doesn't really matter to me if the hub is shot, or the spindle either. I have a spare set at home waiting on my parts car. My dad is going to yank them off and drive over here to help me fix it this weekend.

I was low on brake fluid, but that is to be expected since i put new rear brakes on a while back and haven't really checked it lately. The lines are starting to bleed through as the pads get slimmer. I added more and pumped my brakes back up.

 

Oh.

I didn't have time before it got dark to break out the spare tire jack and lift it up to see which wheel bearing is shot.

I can push and pull on both wheels and it feels the same while it is on the ground. The whole car shakes when I do it.

 

there should be no play at all when shaking the tires on the ground, my front wheel bearing are bad and I can feel the play in both

 

Both wheels make a slight clunk-y feeling, for lack of better descriptive terms.

I have two wheel hubs coming over this coming weekend and we will fix it. Then, unless the original hubs are damaged that badly, I plan to order the bearings and will rebuild the hubs to swap back on later.

 

yep if they make any noise when you do that the bearing are shot........

 

I know this is old and all, but I'm hoping that when the bearings took a dump and you CONTINUED to drive on them, that you didn't melt something together. My friend did that on his old GTO, basically welded a bearing to rear axle (solid rear axle). Had to replace the whole thing then.

 

Everyone, i the outer races are shot it's not as big a deal as some are trying to make it out to be. Check out the Mazdatrix site like Turbonut says and use their tutorial to punch the ould races out and pop new ones in. There is no need to panic or spend big bucks for new hubs and races. When I did mine I had some reservations about the strength of the hub after grinding the slots in it but they've lasted a few hundred miles like that on the track so they'll certainly survive any street driving. Use you head, not your wallet!

Chris

 

you don't grind slots in the actual hub do you? I thought you just put a dimple kinda in the bearing races and punch them out.

 

You have to grind enough away to get something in there to punch out the race. Since the inside diameter of the hub is so small you have to either have a special punch or make a bigger slot so you can use a straight punch. You only need to make yourself a little "lip" to catch. I actually had to make a slot on both sides. If you make a slot on one side then hit it with a punch it will push out that side of the race which in turn jams the other side. So I just made a slot on both sides and slowly went back and forth from one to the other sliding it out a little at a time. It's a real PITA, almost up there with changing the rear diff mount or rear control arm bushings.

 

Now that I re-read your post I think I know what your asking now. No! It would be almost impossible to punch out the race by grinding any type of slot into the actual race. You can only punch the race out towards the outside of the hub so you need to get behind it from the inside of the hub. The mid section of the hub fits so perfectly flat with the race that you must grind the hub to get at the edge of the race. Maybe someone has figured out a different way, but I spent many hours staring at that son of a bitch and what I have posted is what I feel is the most logical way of handling it.

 

see I was picturing grinding the races at an angle so that you can get a punch in there and hit it out at an angle little by little, so you didn't mess up the hub.

 

Look at it this way. Mazdatrix makes a living repairing rotary cars. They have to guarantee their work. Its not going to destroy the hub assy.

People have been doing it this way for decades now. Tried and proven.

 

You could grind the races all you want in every direction and angle possible. But there is no way to get a punch on any part of the race. If you take a hub off and look at it you'll see what I mean. The race slopes out towards the outer edge of the hub which prevents the edge of whatever you are using from contacting the edge of the race.

Here I made a jpg to demonstrate the problem with the hub. This is a hub cut in half. The black areas represent the races. The large hicky running through the middle is my idea of a screwdriver or punch, hehehe. Anyhow, you can see that the angles present inside the hub prevent thhe punch from contacting the race. So you need to cut the hub to get in behind the race like in image 2. The zig-zag lines represents the area grinded away so you can get behind the race.

 

2

 

2 that works!

 

I give-up after this one!!

 

And good luck grinding the hardened race! Grind the hub, save the money, and fagetabatit!

Chris

 

if you say so.. then I guess that's what I'll do