Well, I'm having huge fun with my Octavia. :shock:

I had a wheel bearing fitted by an indy in Northampton. It cured a grinding noise, but I got bad wobble under braking. New discs cured that, but they then made a slow repetitive 'chuff' noise when pressing the brakes at very slow speeds. The garage tightened the hub nut and, on a subsequent visit, hammered something (the caliper carriers I think).

Anyway, the wobble under braking came back shortly after and it was also wobbling badly under acceleration as well.

My brother and I stripped the off-side front brakes several times over a few weeks and found

a) the caliper was stuck, making the off-side disc considerably hotter than the near side

there was bad run out on the disc

c) the disc screw was missing and when I applied the brakes with the wheel removed, the disc jumped off the hub

d) a new disc didn't completely cure the runout (we've put the old one back for now)

e) because there was bad runout on the hub-flange underneath

f) the hub nut was so tight, the air gun wouldn't remove it. It took a 7 foot bar :eek:

We finally concluded the wheel bearing was pressed in wonky and the caliper carriers were no longer straight. So, we've now fitted a whole new 2nd hand knuckle from skospares, complete with bearing and hub flange.

The wobble under acceleration has gone completely, but it still wobbles a bit under braking. I'll try some heavy braking tomorrow to clean the discs up and if that fails, we'll put the new discs back on.

I guess I should probably count myself lucky that nothing large has let go (yet), considering it's just rolled over 170,000.

J

When you fit the disc, check for the amount of 'run out' with a dial guage.

We have one of those now (but it's mag mount :p ) so will do.

J