ok, so i have had a bad front drivers side wheel bearing on my 02 ssei for a while now. i found a guy on ebay that sells them for 86 bucks, a lot cheaper then the parts stores around here and he has really good feedback on all his parts, plus a life time gaurentee, so i figured what the heck. i got the instructions on how to do this job from a thread here about a gtp with the same issue. its almost the same aside from that stupid bracket the holds the brake pads in place. that has to come off for the disk to come off, rediculous design in my opinion. for anyone trying to do this in a climate such as mine with a lot of snow and road salt, i have one major piece of advice: when takeing off the spindle nut, dont bother with anything less than an impact gun! i broke a ratchet, two $18 sockets, and a half inch drive breaker bar trying to get the damnthing off. i finally got an electric impact gun, and that still took about 10 minutes of cranking on it to get it off. oh, and i also emptied an entire can of pb blaster on it too. but now its all apart, finally. just in time for temps to drop into the 20 and snow. hopefully putting it back together will go better than taking it apart. ill let you all know how it goes and how good these bearings are. if its a good one, we can all stand to save a hell of a lot of money on this job.

Awesome. Got the guys' username?

what are some signs that let you know that a wheel bearing is bad?

tony

You can usually hear the bearing start a humming sound. The humming will usually increrase/decrease with vehicle speed. You can hear the pitch of the hum change with miniscule adjustments to the steering wheel while driving. You can also jack car up to check for axial play of the wheel in question.

yep, thats definately what a bad bearing sounds like. mine got to be a loud, constant hum because i put this off WAY to long. anywho, i got it put back together in about 40 minutes! had i had the right tools to start this off, the whole thing probly could have been done in about two or three hours. it took me three days of screwing around and breaking tools just to get it apart. so, i took it for a drive, and you know what i heard??? the smooth pur of a supercharged 3800, and not a damn thing else, thats what. seems to be good for now, so im keeping my fingers crossed. the new bearing weighs about twice what the old one did, and seems to be a lot stronger all around. the sellers name (and ill put this in the ebay cat also) is rlalone1544. 99.7% positive feedback, so i wasnt too worried about it. if anyone else attempts this, and has questions, let me know. ill do my best to help. a lot of this is very tedious half turns at a time, so it gets real boring, real fast. the boot for the cv joint is in the way of a ratchet, so your option is a wrench or use your breaker bar instead, and it takes a while like that. theres about an inch or two of room on a couple sides of it to work with. so yeah, mission accomplished so far. im taking her to chicago this week, so hopefully it all holds up!

Nick,

One of my front bearings went out in the past 2 days (85K miles). How did you find which side had the bad bearing? I have no play whatsoever. The last time I lost a bearing was on my old '92 SSE. I found the bad side by duct taping a micro recorder, in turn, to each side of the suspension as close to the wheel as I could get it. Turned on the recorder. Got her up to about 35 mph (that'* the sweet spot for the humming noise), then listened to the recorder. It was then easy to hear which side was emitting the humming.

Questions:
1. Did you have to specify which ABS connection you have? My potential supplier, is asking me whether I have a plastic connector or a metal connector.
2. My quote is $89 including shipping. I have not checked on warranty. Did your price include shipping?

Thanks for the information.

Oh, here is the connection question the supplier is asking me:

"There are 2 designs for the sensor connection. Check the car to see which is installed.
513121 HUB BEARING [Hub Assembly]
Front Wheel ; Hub Assembly ; (1st Design) ; (Steel Sensor Wire Clip)

513179 HUB BEARING [Hub Assembly]
Front Wheel ; Hub Assembly ; (2nd Design) ; (Plastic Sensor Wire Clip)"

And again, so sorry I was not clever enough to get this all on one post.

Here is the site I'm looking at: http://www.jjprc.com/hub_bearings/513121.htm

Comments anyone?

hmm, im not sure as far as the connection goes. i do know that the 02 and up is a different part than the 01 for some reason, maybe thats the difference between the two. the way i knew for sure was that when i would pull up to an atm, or drive thru window, i could clearly hear the drivers side grinding echo off the building or whatever. i guess if you tried that with the window down, it might make it easier to tell. i also noticed once when i was changing my oil and had it up, that when i would move the drivers side wheel a little, i could hear it there too. other than that i guess i could just hear it better on the dirvers side of the car than the passenger side. hope this helps a little. and yeah, it was like 86 bucks plus shipping, about 105 all together i believe.

Have a site name?