Wheel Bearing Failure?

Bump bump. I have a 2010 prius that "whines" like crazy as I go over 45 mph and up. I can't tell which bearing it is so I ordered a stethoscope and an gonna try that route once I jack the car up. My master toyota tech, who I trust very much, told me it's basically a wild guess when is front bearings that are failing as too which one is the bad one if jacking the car up and looking for play or looseness or grinding sounds does not identify it.

He also said you cannt trust the old method of loading the outside wheel bearing in a turn with more car weight to identify the bad one. He says that doesn't identify the problem anymore as these bearings don t make more or less noise depending on the turn. ....

I swapped tires on my two priuses and is def not tire noise.

Anyone having success in bearing failure identification thay only shows up ay highway speeds?

 

Bestmapman, I know if the disc is rusted on to the hub it has a couple of holes threaded for M8x1.25 bolts, spaced 180 deg. Screwing bolts in allows you to break the caliper free without drama. Maybe there's something similar on the hub?

 

Mine had both front bearings and hub assembly replaced. It was just a thousand km over the 100,000km warranty but my dealer was kind enough to put through the warranty claim. I was told the two front bearing set would have cost me close to $1000 with parts and labour if not covered by warranty. At the end, they only charged me $99 for alignment.

 

The "Chassis Ear" allows you to attached a microphone at each wheel location and then drive the car and hear which wheel bearing is bad. I have one and it works great. The high cost of Prius wheel hubs justifies the $100 to $200 cost of the Chassis Ear. See below:

Amazon.com: chassis ear

 

Thanks for the link.

 

I too have to replace my rear driver side bearing...it's starting to get louder and louder every week. I just need to find time to replace them. I'm glad i'm not the only one that has this problem!

 

So are the Timken bearings the exact same ones as what Toyota dealers would supply you?

I've had real bad luck with non-0em bearings and control arms off flea-bay failing on my highlander hybrid within 15,000 miles of installation.

I need to replace a 2010 prius bearing and I'm suffering from sticker shock once again at Toyota's crazy oem parts pricing.

 

Why are Prius wheel bearings failing so often? That should be rare, unless they're inadequately lubricated, contaminated, or too small for the load they carry (i.e., inept design). I've put about three-quarters of a million miles on three prior cars and never had a single failed wheel bearing, except one apparently somehow invaded by water.

 

Agree with your post. Wheel bearings used to be separately replaceable, cheap, and reasonably durable. How is this progress?

Noise and roughness of a rolling-element bearing means roughened races, which ordinarily happens only if bearings are overloaded (including any pre-load), used beyond reasonable designed life, or contaminated.

My Mazda went over 600K on all the original wheel bearings except the left front.

 

I don't know if the hub has it or not. The disk was a little hard to get off. But several whack got it to move. The hub came right off with little effort.

 

rock auto has PRO PART hub/bearings for 59 billz or TIMKENs for $169...... I wish I could trust PRO part for 110 bucks less..... But I've had terrible luck when the cheapest bearings I could buy for my highlander. One failed in 20,000 miles. The other the hub splines wouldn't even fit over the axle once I removed it. Both ebay bearings.

Anyone ever try the cheap pro part bearings?

 

Our Prius gen3 from 2010 recently on 325 000 km had its fourth wheel bearing replaced, all four on the different wheels. Add to that one coil ignition due to the lpg-convertion made it the most reliable car we ever owned.

 

So far my Gen 1 has needed one rear and one front, and I had to deal with those same questions. The bad rear I could definitely identify by feel with the car jacked up. The one in front never showed any sign of trouble when jacked up with the weight off. The only thing that gave me a positive ID was a ChassisEar—but looking back, after I had the positive ID, some of the other hints did seem to fit.

My first thread was about the rear bearing, and whether the pitch of the sound was useful in distinguishing a bearing problem from, say, the transaxle. It did seem that by analyzing the sound pitch, the transaxle problem seemed pretty well ruled out.

My second thread was about the front bearing, where I ended up considering a lot of different hints because it was never obvious by feel the way the rear had been. The front noise was louder when loaded on the outside of a turn. Also the pitch was not the same (when compared at the same road speed) as what I had heard with the rear. Looking at the old bearing, I was able to find a relationship between its construction and the pitch of the sound I had heard, so I think that might be useful on a Gen 1 for distinguishing a front from a rear. That's because Gen 1s use different bearing designs on the front and the rear; since Gen 2 went to the same style of bearing front and back, I'm not sure it would still be useful for Gen 2 and later.

-Chap

 

Slight impact with the curb ( at angle) is another possible reason.
Alex