1996 Legacy LSi FWD. I pulled the hub assembly and had a shop press in new bearings. Those lasted about 20,000 miles and failed.

 

I bought a used hub and installed it, hub seemed fine of course, no play.

 

Now that same bearing is failing again after only 10,000 miles.

 

I've had an alignment done and the tires wear evenly. Is that just bad luck or can something else cause bearings to fail? Just want to make sure I'm not missing something here.

 

The original rotor is still there, can a rotor warp so bad that it's making noise "wub, wub, wub, wub" and overheating the hub? Temp gun showed something like a 30 degree difference from one side to the other.

Edited September 9, 200916 yr by grossgary

Could be wrong torque specs(over tighten) on the lug nuts and the big long bolts by the rear hub??? I know a lot of SVX rear wheel bearings failures are due to over torque other then not replacing the shipping grease

Is this the front, or the rear (rears being the subject of an endwrench article)?

 

The knuckle could be out-of-round, front or rear.

 

Also, was the shop familiar with subaru stuff? There are a time or two in the presswork where you have to be *very* sure you are supporting the right part.

 

Lastly, did you torque the hub nut with the wheel in the air, or (hopefully not) on the ground?

 

That's all I got, in addition to wjhat's been said above.

 

Dave

SOA introduced a revised low force install procedure that uses hub tamer type tools that decreases the risk of deforming the bearing and/or the knuckle during assembly.

 

In almost all cases, a properly installed bearing fails when one of the grease seals is compromised.

 

How do the polished sliding surfaces of your rear half shafts look? If they're pitted and rough, they'll chew through the inner seals and cause repeat failures.

thanks guys, i'll check all that stuff. i think i'm just going to swap in another hub assembly rather than deal with that nasty bearing job.

Hard to say. Could be an imbalance in the brakes causing the extra heat. Tire noise can sometimes be mistaken for a bad bearing. Of course, if the noise goes away immediately after replacing the bearing and the same tire is still on, then it can be ruled out.

Tires have been rotated with no change. I don't think tire noise would increase the temps 30 degrees on one side over the other, I would think that has to be friction related.

 

I'm going to make sure the brakes aren't dragging and then swap in another hub.

Edited September 10, 200916 yr by grossgary

If tire noise could cause bad bearings mine would have fallen apart by now.

 

A stuck caliper or wheel cylinder would cause the excess heat.