What the heck is going on? Bearing or CV Joint?

[fahrvegnugen at cox.net (David Utley)]

-----Original Message-----
From: scirocco-l-bounces@scirocco.org
[mailto:scirocco-l-bounces@scirocco.org]On Behalf Of C Boyko
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2004 12:36 PM
To: David Winchell
Cc: scirocco-l@scirocco.org
Subject: Re: What the heck is going on? Bearing or CV Joint?

Hey, no beating yourself up, that's my job, okay?
It could have been worse, my son had a HORRIBLE noise on the front end of
the Valdez (87 Jetta) and he knows the sound of a bad CV by now, (he has a
punch card for axles at the Canadian Tire I think, kill 10, get the 11th
free?)so he asked for advice. I said I thought it was a bearing, but what
do I know. My brother (a longtime VW owner and Class A mechanic by trade)
siad,"Oh no, that's way worse than a bearing, it HAS to be the diff."
thing Did the stethoscope, yep, evil sounds coming from the diff. Go
remove and buy a new tranny, it gets bolted in place, SAME BLOODY NOISE!
It WAS a bearing, a really bad one though.

So there you go. There WAS swaering that would rival Anson's here though.
As long as you don't swear at people, it's all good. That does suck
though.

Cathy
1987 2L 16V Scirocco - the Silver Headache
1979 1.8L 10:1 8V - Klaus- sounds like 0.33 of a Chevelle
"The light at the end of the tunnel is probably an oncoming train"


> Ok,  I have been driving with what I thought was a bad front wheel
> bearing for a couple of weeks. I bought the TT tool from peter and
> picked up a couple of bearings at the same time.
>
> Yesterday I finally got the time to throw the rocc in the air and work
> on the bearings,  I got part way through and realized that my gear
> puller was not going to get the inner race off the hub, done for the
> night.  I went bright and early to advance auto to pick up a better
> puller... No such luck.
>
> Resort to grinding the puppy off...  Get out the Die Grinder and an
> hour later and I got it off.
>
> Bandage the cuts and get back under the car. get the new bearing
> pressed in, press the hub back on and, Oh NO!!!!!!!  I look under the
> car and realize that the inner CV boot is toast.  I just had these
> rebuilt when Al did the 2.0L swap just before Cincy.  If I were a
> swearing man I could have put together an Anson style sting of
> explicatives worthy of conversation on Al's Sub.
>
> I get the car put back together and the same noise is present as
> before that I  was convinced was a bad bearing.
>
> Would a bad inner CV joint have the same characteristics as a bad
> bearing?  Noise once load is removed from the drive train? consistent
> with speed of vehicle? Decrease on turns opposite side of bad cv
> joint?
>
> Any help would be great...  Guess this is what I get for trying to do
> something on my own with out having to take the car to Al and ask what
> is going on....  Sorry, Al, Should have called you first....
>
> TIA for you help,
>
> Dave
>
> --
> David L. Winchell, II
> '87 Scirocco 2.0L 16V
> '86 Scirocco
> '01 Galant V6
> '00 Silverado

For those that may face this issue in the future, and for those that care,
there is a fairly eay method to diagnose if your front wheel bearings are
going south.  Get on a two lane highway, --devoid of oncoming cars--, and
use both lanes as a slalom course, at a speed at or above 45 mph or so.
While doing this, take special attention of the noise that you hear.  If you
hear the noise/vibration increase when going to the left, it is the right
wheel bearing, and vice-versa.  I have done this for many years, and have
yet to be wrong using this method to diagnose if it is a wheel bearing or
another problem altogether...

HTH
David