Hi all.

I had a front wheel bearing 'go' (fortunately not suddenly, but started making horrible loud noises to give me warning) in August 2016; mileage about 100k. Had the car for many years and miles, no bearing problems before. Took it to my normal garage and replaced. (They might have used a cheapy bearing, certainly not OEM.)

Car then did about 10-15k miles, motorway or rural mostly, not used every day.

I had the car checked over last Autumn (2018) pre MOT, and it was found by another (new to me) garage that the bearning was humming and needed replacing again (Don't know what make they used, wouldn't be OEM). Not chuffed...

Car does another say 5k miles (in total is just over 120k now).

This March (2019), the car suddenly started making a horrid rotationally-related noise again on a motorway trip. Was taken as an emergency to another local garage and, yes, wheel bearing's gone again!

 

Obviousy getting a tad fed up here. Not to say out of pocket. The latest garage say that they've come across this quite a bit lately (not sure if only on Skoda or generally): something to do with bearing design having changed and the way that they're fitted needing changing; that most garages still hammer them in, whilst they actually need a special tool to wind them in.

 

Does this make sense to anyone? Any reasons otherwise why I'm having such problems? The first one was on my alloy wheels, the third whilst running on standard steels (winter tyres) and the second after a season of steels but actually still on the alloys - but can the actual wheels make the difference? The bearing's on the hub isn't it? And when I swap the wheels it's random as to which wheel goes on where (winter tyres are directional, summers not) and probably what was front becomes rear to even the tyre wear. It's not happened on any other wheel, only the same one each time.

 

Cheers.

 

@Elsie - Yes, the wheel bearings have to be pressed in and out evenly. Hammering them in risks getting them mis-aligned, with the effects you report above.

 

There's no issue with using different size wheels as long as the offset (ET number) is within the design limits for the car model.

17 minutes ago, KenONeill said:

Yes, the wheel bearings have to be pressed in and out evenly

There's a lot more to it than that. You need special tooling to get in behind the hub and press/push there. See this:

 

 

 

Pushing on the hub surface (instead of using this tooling)  is the same as pushing on the inner of the bearing, and will cause damage.

 

4 hours ago, KenONeill said:

@Elsie - There's no issue with using different size wheels as long as the offset (ET number) is within the design limits for the car model.

 

Just to clarify, both sets are standard Skoda wheels, correct and same offset, same sizes; the alloys are original with the car, the steels off a lesser trim model or something but otherwie identical as far as I am aware.

But obviously this doesn't matter anyway.... ;-}

Here's a photo of the hub/bearing combination, showing where the tooling needs to push on during installation:

 

17 hours ago, Elsie said:

 

Just to clarify, both sets are standard Skoda wheels, correct and same offset, same sizes; the alloys are original with the car, the steels off a lesser trim model or something but otherwie identical as far as I am aware.

But obviously this doesn't matter anyway.... ;-}

OK. You did actually need to specify this (well you didn't need for technical reasons concerning the wheel fits since there aren't any but we didn't know that because you hadn't) because it's not that unusual for people to run -1" and a width or 2 narrower Winter tyres.