Rear wheel bearing inspection - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

JamesStein · #1 07-06-2004, 10:30 PM

I took apart my rear wheels to change out the axles. Am now replacing rotors, and the rear brake lines. I'm wondering.. how can I check the wheel bearings? The hubs feel tight, they don't spin free and I can't feel any play in them at all.

However, the seal looks pretty rough. I'm also having some squealing coming from this side of the car that was originally infrequent but has recently become almost constant. To make things a little more confusing, the outter CVS boot is wasted which prompted the entire tear down. I certainly don't want to replace something that doesn't need it. But I also don't want to put it all back together and discover that I need to redo the bearings as well.

lucforce · #2 07-06-2004, 11:19 PM

Wheel bearing rarely squeel, but they will roar.
You should have checked this out prior to teardown. No exacting method exists that is foolproof in design to check sealed wheel bearings. If the seals look tore up or damaged, replace the bearings while you already have the thing apart.
They only hold a certain amount of grease and once it is gone, it's gone.

You went through quite a bit of teardown to get to this point. Don't put questionable parts back on if you do not have to.

JamesStein · #3 07-07-2004, 07:22 AM

I'm not sure what I could have done to "check this out" beforehand. Aside from spinning the wheel which certainly made a little noise when I did that. Of course then I am listening to the eniter drivetrain.

The outter CV boot was torn, now that its removed I can tell that the outter CV joint is much looser than the inner joint so I am sure it was making some noise.

The rotor was seriously worn and the pads were scraping a little, likely due to the brake hoses that are old and cracked. So I removed the pads/calipers to eliminte any noise being generated by this area.

When I spin the hub alone, it does make some noise. Does it growl? No, but its not completely silent. But I'm not sure if it should be completetly silent. There is no noticable play, at least nothing I can feel nor was there with the wheel on. The seal, (the above picture) doesn't look too bad to me. But again, I've never seen a good one or a bad one to make a judgement call. Its a little cruddy. There appears to be some grime/grease around the outside edges.

I've read several posts about how much of a PITA the rear bearings are on these cars and would just assume leave a good bearing alone than 'repack' it and make it worse.

I guess I'll just reassemble it and give it a drive and see what I hear. Now that I know how to get the axle out I can probably pop the outter end of the axle out in about 10 minutes.