The install is as important for bearing life as the manufacturer.
Anytime I hear of very short lifespan wheel bearings, I suspect the install was done wrong and the bearings were damaged during install.
We install a ton of Duralast bearings at work. We also warranty probably 65% of those bearings again because people are too cheap to go with a quality bearing. Duralast failure rates are nuts.
Order Timken, they've been the least problematic of any we've done.
I know it costs more but just go with the original OEM bearing, I used duralast, and other auto parts store bearings on my 04 rear i replaced it 3 times within a year. Then said screw it bought the ford on and havnt had any problem.
i saw on rockauto you can buy the whole front kit for like 30 sumthin... has anyone used this? brand is PRO i think. ford is like 20 bucks more which i may just fork over.
maybe its different on zetecs... but on my 06, the bearing is pressed into the knuckle if we're talking about the front.
for the rear (I have drums) they are pressed into the drums themselves.
If you torque the bearing incorrectly it can cause it to fail very quickly. I messed mine up and it went bad in 20miles. I don't know if that is your problem but just a thought.
Plain old Motorcraft is said to be the best Shane.
I went with NAPA's on the rear so far so good.
When was your last alignment done? Take your car over to Les Schwab over on 16th S. by the big Walmart. They can tell you right then and there if it's out of wack.
i had my alignment done recently... also took my car there a coupe times already. they said it wasnt my bearing but they said they couldnt see anything else wrong... i replaced my axle and the noise is still coming from that side so it has to be the bearing. its a rotational noise.
Autozone axle. they are working fine. have not had a problem with them yet. we shall see. axle is lifetime and easy to replace though.
have not had the car in the air yet. although you can feel a bad bearing on the ground. i know i have felt it before. lol want to help me do a bearing this weekend if i can get one?
FYI, the O'Reilly's Masterpro version of Duralast part has the same shoddy quality, don't ask how I know as I won't tell you. Don't use any of those branded bearings.........................if a good brand bearing is failing you have not torqued it down right 90% of the time.
Much more likely to be undertorqued. If of course you overtorqued to 500 pounds well, yeah, it's screwed. You cannot know you overtorqued unless you measured it though.
well this ended up being my problem. got it all fixed.
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
Focus Fanatics Forum
5.8M posts
189.1K members
Since 2003
A forum community dedicated to Ford Focus owners and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about SVT performance, modifications, classifieds, troubleshooting, maintenance, and more!