Hi

My girlfriend's fabia had a loud noise coming from the NSF wheel which the mechanic deemed to be a wheel bearing issue. The bearing (hub?) was replaced and the mechanic told her dad that it was a touch job and that lots of hammering was involved, etc.

Since the car was returned the ABS and ASR lights are on permanently. They have told the GFs dad that this is normal after having the bearings replaced, that the mechanics own fabia has an ABS light on and it's nothing to worry about. I don't believe the mechanic and wondered what I can do to find out if there is a problem.

I have scanned with VCDS-lite but when accessing the ABS, it's complaining that it 'Can't synch baud rate'. I've tried changing the starting baud rate with no success. One thing that does seem weird, when trying to access the ABS via VCDS there is loud clicking coming from the car. Is this normal? It doesn't happen whilst accessing other areas.

Thanks for any advice.

it is not normal, and i recon hes buggered the sensor, or bent the abs ring, or why would he mention hammering?

The wheel bearing may of been pressed in to the hub the wrong way. I may be wrong but I think that one side of the wheel bearing has a magnetic ring witch the abs sensor reads the wheel speed from.

these are the hub ring sensor, not bearing type. Can only be these things that would have been affected by the change

Edited 27 August, 201213 yr by Lofty79

i know when i had my hub done they replaced the ABS sensor to. they told me it was common practice to replace them with the hubs

The alarm bells should start ringing when they said they had to use hammers and tbh.

I would take it to a dealer, get thm to fix it and send the bill to these muppets. Also complain to trading standards the works. Idiots like these should not be working on cars, simple. Telling a customer the ABS light should be on after a bearing change is laughable at best, illegal at worst.

The most likely cause of issue is they haven't pulled the bearing in far enough and the sensor is too far away from the pick up. It's worth noting that Fabia front wheel bearings should NOT be pressed in, they are supposed to be pulled in. As the hub and the bearing are one unit if you press down on the hub to push the bearing in you will over load the bearing races.

+1 hammering is a amateur trick, chances are if the abs was fine, the bearing wouldnt last that long due to the forced impact

Thanks for the replies everyone.

The problem is that the mechanic is a friend of my GFs dad and did the job on the cheap using non OEM parts (GFs dad works at a motor factors and gets parts cheap). I think the hammering was specifically related to removing something, I'm guessing the hub? Is it reasonable to use a hammer to remove the hub?

I took the car out in a wet carpark today and did some emergency stops. The wheels were locking up but I couldn't feel the ABS kicking in through the pedal, so I assume the brakes ABS isn't working. The mechanic had the car back a weeks or so ago because we complained about the ABS+ASR lights and he said (to my GFs dad) that he had it on the rolling road thing that they test the brakes on and that it was braking fine and that there were no fault codes. It seems like my GFs dad would rather have his daughter driving around in a car without ABS than have strong words with his friend, the mechanic!!!

Edited 27 August, 201213 yr by cha1n