OK, as long as there is a way to check wheel bearing wear - How can I
check upper and lower ball joint wear. I've a vibration up front and
it's not the wheels/tires. No noise in the front wheel bearings either.
Have new tie-rod ends installed along with a front end alignment. As
good as it can get with bad ball joints I guess.

Thanks,

John

On 1/19/2014 10:44 AM, Jim Felder wrote:
> Thanks, Dennis. I suspect the front, and am prepared to deal with it today,
> but just wanted to check. The rears are mainly suspect because of the high
> mileage on them (as much as 355,000 if they are original).
>
> I was going to amend my opinion on the rears anyway. I went back out and
> checked; they have no play in the horizontal axis but a little in the
> vertical axis, if I grab the top and bottom, that is.
>
> Jim
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 10:30 AM, Dennis Haynes <d23haynes57@hotmail.com>wrote:
>
>> If you can affect the rumbling noise by changing direction the problem is
>> usually the front. The front bearings also fail much more often than the
>> rears. To test you need to pull the calipers to get the pads off of them.
>> Even then without load they sound OK but still be problem. The front
>> bearing
>> really should be inspected and re-lubed every 30K or each brake job.
>>
>> The play in the rear is normal. With the van rear very well supported you
>> can let the engine spin the rear wheels and using a stethoscope (or big
>> screw driver) on the housing a bad bearing will be evident. Once they are
>> making noise grease will not fix them.
>>
>> Dennis
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
>> Jim Felder
>> Sent: Sunday, January 19, 2014 11:10 AM
>> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
>> Subject: Tell me about rear bearings
>>
>> Of all the Vanagon things I have done, here is one I have not. On the road,
>> at any speed, if I turn the car to the left so as to put the force on the
>> right side, I hear a rum-rum-rum sound that matches the rotational speed of
>> the car. Suspecting races that were not fully seated on the front wheels
>> (like all low frequency sounds, it's hard to get a location on this by
>> listening) after a recent replacement, I jacked up the front and checked
>> the
>> bearings. They don't move and any noise I hear I believe is the slight drag
>> of the pads and on the rotors.
>>
>> I jacked up the rear and this is what I found: there is not any noticeable
>> wobble on eaither of the rear wheels, but I can pull them in and out with a
>> noticeable clunk and about 1/16 of free play, maybe a hair more.
>>
>> Does that signal replacement time, or is there more I could be doing to
>> check the bearings? The car doesn't make any other unusual sounds form the
>> drive train when going straight down the road.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>>
>