so, back to the story, on my way home from work.......went round a roundabout and the noise suddenly came back!
so i pulled over, visually looked around the car and couldn't find n e thing, hopped back in expecting the noise to dissapear like last time, however, it didn't. i thought i should try and limp it home, started driving slowly still not knowing what the problem was. i then noticed everyone was looking at me, so opened my window and realised why. the noise i had heard was ten times louder on the outside! lots of scretching and banging! so i thought "stuff this", pulled into a car park. i had a sneaky suspicion on what it was, so jacked up the passenger side rear wheel and it all became clear, it appeared the wheel bearing had collapsed or something of the same idea (a hell of alot of movement on the wheel!)i didn't wanna drive it no further to prevent anymore damaged, so phoned the trusty AA and was told i'd have to wait 3 hours!
luckily, they weren't three hours, the guy agreed its a wheel bearing problem and proptly jacked the car up took the wheel off, removed the cap, however we weren't covered in shards of wheel bearing, so what happened? another interesting point would be that the AA guy was able to get two turns to tighten the hub which reduced the play. so does this mean the nut had come loose? with the split pin etc in place?
the only thing that we can think of is the wheel bearing was never fitted properly and just gave in that night!
we managed to pack out the bearing with grease which ment it rotated freely and was drivable to an extent.
took the car to the garage this morning with a new wheel bearing. got a ring from them not long afta to tell me the bearing had warn the axel stub (?) thus meaning they could attempt to reshape the old one, or buy a new one. i've opted to go for a new one which is gonna take a day to deliver so i'm currently carless!
so the idea of stopping to prevent damage was a bit late really! hopefully it will all be sorted tomorrow and i can get the G back again!
i'll leave you with a pic
the G looking very sorry for herself! (sorry its not as good as dub_envy's for when i melted a piston the first time round!
)anyone else had this happen??
regards
Doug
