At 145,000 miles, the noise coming from the left front wheel bearing was getting unbearable. I took the car to an auto shop to have it replaced. He charged a reasonable rate and I supplied the National brand bearing myself.

All was good for about 1 month. Then my wife stated the left front brake was making a squealing noise. I figure I'd have the rotors turned (1st time) to see if that would solve the problem. Nope! I took the car for a drive and noticed not only squealing noise from the brakes, but also wheel bearing noise again. Not right!

The other day I decided to jack up the car and take the left front wheel off to observe the rotor/brake assembly while the wheel was spinning. To my astonishment, the rotor had a face runout of 0.020" at the outer edge. Typical runout is about 0.001-0.002". Needless to say, the amount of wobble in the rotor/caliper assembly was ridiculous! Suprizingly, the care stopped on a dime and there was no shake/vibration in the steering wheel.

I removed the caliper assembly and rotor from the hub. I measured 0.010" face runout on the hub. Again, 0.001" is about the max runout you'd see at the hub.

I took the car back down to the auto shop and pleaded my case that something was not right! He pulled the hub off to examine it. Come to find out that when his mechanic replaced the bearing, he butchered up the hub with a chisel terribly trying to remove the inner race of the bearing. When he pressed on the new bearing, the inner bearing race did not seat properly and was ****-eyed on the hub. This caused the excessive runout.

He ordered a new hub and bearing to fix the problem free of charge. The moral of my long story is that if you've had the front wheel bearing(s) replaced and you have a bearing failure shortly thereafter, this could be your problem.

 

Thanks so much for the update sir.