Clean & grease wheel bearings on 850?

Post by **JimBee** » 07 Jul 2011, 20:47

Back in the day, we always pulled the wheel bearings, cleaned them in solvent (usually gasoline) blew them out to dry and repacked with wheel bearing grease. Should I do the same for my 850? Has anyone used synthetic grease for this?

Post by **jimmy57** » 07 Jul 2011, 20:56

your 850 has completely sealed wheel bearings on the front and almost completely sealed on rear. The days of tapered bearings and castellated spindle nuts are over for all but a handful of vehicles.

Post by **jblackburn** » 07 Jul 2011, 21:22

And when the wheel bearings go bad they will be suuuurrrrreeee to let you know with lots of bad noises

Post by **JimBee** » 07 Jul 2011, 22:03

That's a handy-guy spoiler. Booo. How long do they last?

Post by **jblackburn** » 07 Jul 2011, 22:09

Seems they start failing after 150 or so on the front. Rears don't happen often.

One of mine went at 180,000. The rest are original. Some people have well over 200,000 on theirs. At $100 a pop, it's not a "preventative maintenance" thing that I would bother with.

Post by **JimBee** » 08 Jul 2011, 07:40

After one starts to get loud, how many miles do we have before smoke and failure?

zhenya · Post by **zhenya** » 08 Jul 2011, 07:53

It is very odd to me coming from owning many VW's and Audi's in the past why their wheel bearings only last 50k, and these last 3x that or more??? Just another great thing about these cars!

Post by **JimBee** » 08 Jul 2011, 10:22

Thanks, Zhenya, but I'm wondering how critical it is to replace it once it's obviously starting to fail.

Post by **jblackburn** » 08 Jul 2011, 10:27

In my experience, once they go, they go quick. I put 250 miles on one while on a trip it went bad on, then driving around for the week while it was on order, and it felt/sounded like it was going to come apart after it got warmed up. The hub assembly fell apart in my hand when I unbolted the axle from it.

It made a loud WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA over 40 mph, and "whap whap whap whap" every time you turned.

zhenya · Post by **zhenya** » 08 Jul 2011, 11:24

Agreed. Once you can hear it for sure above the tire noise, it's time to take care of it. It's not something you want to have come apart on the highway.