That which bears me

 About this time last year Angie and I took a trip to Pennsylvania. During the return trip my 2015 VW Jetta TDI started to make a weird humming noise at about 65mph. Interestingly if you went a little faster or slower the noise went away.

I ignored it up until about a month ago when the humming turned into a grinding noise at all speeds. Sounded like a wheel bearing to me. I jacked up the car and, yup, definitely a wheel bearing gone bad in the rear passenger side. I ordered parts and then had to order tools. The wheel bearing is held in by an 18mm triple square bolt. I had a 14mm triple square socket to remove the caliper bolts but not one any larger. I was unable to find one locally so Amazon sent me a set of Capri brand. Hopefully the set will have all the bits I need..

The bearing itself is really easy to replace, jack the car up, remove the wheel, remove the brake caliper with that 14mm triple square socket, remove the torx (t30? I forget) screw that holds the brake rotor on and remove the rotor. Then pound a screwdriver into the gap that holds the cap on. Mine was really stuck, took a lot of pounding.

Then use the 18mm triple square socket to remove the axle bolt. This was REALLY tight. It just laughed at my Makita 1/2" cordless impact. I put the 30 inch breaker bar on it and added a 24" piece of jack handle. Took a lot of body weight even then.

As you can see the old one was really grungy. There are two bearings there, the inner one was okay, the outer was pretty terrible.

Installation is reverse of removal, no tricks here. I torqued the bolt to 130ft-lb and then 90 degrees. Along with the locktite on the bolt explains why they were so hard to remove. These are torque to yield fasteners, single use only. I ordered a new bolt but the bearing came with one so I've got a spare for what it's worth.

A test drive shows that the noise is gone but now I'm thinking there might be another failed bearing in the front. I didn't check those since I only had the rear of the car jacked up, I did check the passenger side, it was silent.

Oh well, in a day or two I'll jack it up again and have a look see...