Are front bearings a maintenance item? Weird sound...

[rbajjk]

This is an excellent forum...Since I bought my '97 Aurora one year ago I have successfully removed/re-installed the driver door panel to tighten the mirror bolts, replaced the radiator, and now regularly change my own motor oil (mobile one). I've read some advice on these and other boards that help with it all.

Now my latest issue... front wheel pulse. Similar to that warped rotor pulse when braking (but less intense), I am now getting a similar pulse/sound when driving (no brakes). The pulse increases/decreases with speed (as the wheel rotates). I just had the wheels balanced/rotated, and never really noticed it prior to then. Although I had to have the wheels balanced due to some vibration at highways speeds.

Does anyone think it might be the bearings? Given the issues others have had with Auroras at the 70k-90k mile mark (mine has 80k), I am wondering if it is time to have the bearings repacked. I am not even sure if that is a maintenance item. Could it be the brakes (never had them checked)?

Thanks for listening. And thanks in advance for your tips and advice.

RBAJJK (Brian)

[zimaad]

Does the car pull to one side at all when driving? Obviously, you have had warped rotors on the front of this car before. Did they seem to get warped again quickly? What I'm getting at is a bad caliper. Could be that your caliper isn't coming all the way back when you take your foot of the brake and causing light friction on the rotor. If it only did it on one side, you may feel the car pull slightly to that side.

[zimaad]

something else it could be is a tire. If it is out of round or not balanced correctly it would give a noise in sync with RPM.

[alphalanos]

i dont mean to hijack this thread, but my car pulls to the side while driving, and the steering is very loose. replacing bearings is an issue for my car.

[RobertHammen]

BTW, if you're getting your tires balanced for highway vibrations, make sure the place you're having this done at is using a Hunter GSP 9700 machine to do a true road-force balance. That's the only way to eliminate the vibration on these cars.

http://www.gsp9700.com will explain the machine and give you a list of shops near you that have it.

--Robert
who doesn't work for Hunter, but has had this done 3x on my '98.

[dsatt12]

Tires do go bad too. If you had a broken belt in the tire or a lump, rotate it to the front, voila!

That Hunter road force balancer roberthammen mentioned is supposed to be excellent at finding out if a tire is just plain bad, since their machine won't be able to satisfactorily balance it then. Granted, using it didn't help mine much, but things are just getting a little worn out at 183k miles now.

[RenoNFO]

Just had the same problem....SPEED related grinding, whirring, groaning noise from the front. Scared to death it was transmission related, but turned out to be the bearings. At the shop, they were about $350 each installed. I'm quite certain that I could have done it way cheaper myself. Good luck!