Gen 1 Front struts and bearings

Here's a description of the job. I went with a Toyota bearing for about $38 instead of $15, still not a painful price at all.

It is a bit of a tedious job.

-Chap

 

Yes, since you are hearing a sound that appears to be bearing-related.

 

I bought two bearings for the front, seeing they were cheap and I could have one on hand for the other side without paying shipping twice. But I only invested the labor in changing the one that was bad.

When I did the right rear, because those hub-bearing assemblies are more expensive, I only bought the one I needed.

My experience does not lead me to any sort of expectation that bearing failures will be closely spaced in time. I only ever changed two bearings in my Gen 1, a right rear and a left front, and the first was around 150,000 miles if I remember right, and the second around 200,000 and 3 or 4 years later. At the time of the collision at 238,000 I still had the spare front bearing unused.

Given the small odds of coincident failure, and the good odds that something else will happen before a repeat bearing failure, I'm fairly happy that I put in my hours only to swap the bearing that needed it, and used my other hours to do other things I wanted to do.

-Chap

 

Very plausible. I had hit the mother of all potholes on I-75 one winter night around 70 mph, which changed the shape of the wheel on that corner. Between that incident and when I obtained a round replacement wheel, the unround one got rotated to the other corner for a while. Those two corners were the only two I ever had to change bearings on.

-Chap