Gentlemen,
Having worked on cars, motorcycles and small engines most of my life I have come to expect poor engineering, but this one has to take the cake.
I have a 2013 Ford Taurus with only 32,000 miles on it. Awhile back my son was riding in the back seat and said he thought it sounded like I had a wheel bearing going bad. My hearing is not great any longer but I had noticed a hum around 48-55 miles per hour.
We decided to change the bearing.
Now these bearings are not like the ones in the old days with independant suspensions being used with all wheel drives. The bearing comes assembled in a housing, 2 tapered roller bearings pressed together and pre loaded. There is also a new wheel hub pressed into this assembly. The cost for this new technology is around $120.00
Now comes the fun part!
Being as the car doesn't have that many miles and gets driven sparingly in the winter months the caliper, rotor and wheel bearing bolts all came out easily. Prior to starting the job we visited that wonderful fount of knowledge, YouTube. Most of the repair videos on there were horror stories but I thought those guys were just amateurs and it shouldn't be a problem at all.
Boy was I wrong!!!
Some engineer who probably never learned that mating aluminum, steel and salt water causes some of the most hellish corrosion possible did just that. We pounded and banged and heated for a little over 4 hours and if we wouldn't have had the use of a lift we would probably still be at it today.
The bearing is located by a ring that is machined proud of the main housing. It's only .312 wide and about 4-1/2" diameter but given the galvanic action and the corrosion it made it like the bearing was welded into the aluminum carrier.
I have never worked on a car where I gave up on a job but this one almost got the best of me and my son.
We started Friday evening after he got home from work and didn't finish up until early Saturday morning after everything was put away. My time schedule to get to the model engineering show Saturday morning was to get up around 4:00am, load up, get on the road, drive 2-1/2 hours and arrive early enough to get set up. Which didn't happen! I was just totally worn out.
Oh and once the old bearing was removed and the corrosion scraped out of the carrier it took exactly 9 minutes to install the new bearing, mount the rotor, bolt on the caliper and put the wheel back on.
gbritnell