Hello Rod!



 AW>> Hopefully my car will make it. Can anyone tell me definitively how

 AW>> long I can go with a noisy wheel bearing? It started off making some

 AW>> noise at Ilford and made it back to Sydney ok. Countless trips in the

 AW>> past seven days have seen it get worse, to the extent that it now

 AW>> sounds like I'm towing a semitrailer behind the car. Someone

 AW>> suggested it wont catastrophically fail, but will just get noisier

 AW>> and noisier. I want to make a trip to Liverpool on Monday and I don't

 AW>> want to get stranded in the ghetto, so this is a serious question.



 RS> Usually they dont fail catastrophically. I had one on a long trip, which

 RS> was basically making a quite pronounced humming noise when you put your

 RS> foot on the brakes, front wheel bearing. I didnt bother to do anything

 RS> about it till it was convenient, with no problems.



That's similar to my situation. It started making noise a couple of

hundred K's from Sydney. I got back to Sydney with it and needed car

transport for a week in which it wasn't convenient for me to have it

repaired.



 RS> Most usually its just one of the rollers which has broken down in the

 RS> bearing and the noise is just the defect sort of clanking as it goes

 RS> around. Often its just lost a chip off it, can be surprisingly noisy.

 RS> Its not likely to be the end of the world if it does fail

 RS> catastrophically anyway, just make you have to get it towed away. You

 RS> dont normally get the whole wheel fall off or anything spectacular like

 RS> that. Even then, that usually isnt an unspeakable disaster either, even

 RS> tho its undesirable.



That's what I thought, but when I mentioned it the other night (I was

genuinely concerned about being stranded on the M4), I was told it

wasn't smart to want to leave it a few days and have it repaired "on my

timetable". Someone even suggested wheel loss.



It's a bit funny actually Brenton, you hate the way Rod offers an

opinion on everything, even things such as TVs that you believe he

knows _nothing_ about. OTOH on a thing such as car bearings that you

admitted you knew little about, you made me think I was being stupid

for wanting to wait a few days and have it repaired on my timetable.



 RS> Whats this wimpy use of the car anyway, I thought you zealots had a bit

 RS> of dedication to your zealotry |-)



I would have needed a tandem. Or a tridem because we were going to take

my girlfriends 80+ y/o granny out somewhere.





Regards, Alan



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