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Any wheel bearing issues?

3K views 11 replies 7 participants last post by  DPG57 
#1 ·
My wife's 2015 6 has about 55k miles on it, and while driving it for the first time in the while with the radio off, I'm hearing a groan coming from the left front that varies by speed. It sounds similar to a bad front wheel bearing that I've had in the past on a Volkswagen, but I'm not 100% sure. Before I start throwing parts at the problem, has anyone had a similar issue? I searched here and on Google, and I'm not finding anything to indicate that this is a chronic problem with these cars.
 
#3 ·
Definitely a groan/grind. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary when I did the brakes a couple weekends ago to make me think there was a bearing issue. I found a video on YouTube with a good method of testing the bearings if you're not getting obvious slop.
 
#5 ·
That echos the lack of search results on the topic. There is a first time for everything I guess. I'll probably find out tomorrow, when I'm home and can put the car up on jacks. But first I'll have a couple hours of driving to see if I can further pinpoint where the noise is coming from. Right now I know it seems to be coming from the LF, it is speed dependent, but not RPM dependent.
 
#9 ·
Pretty unlikely to be a wheel bearing at 55k. Now if you had well north of 100k miles, quite possibly, especially if there's a fair bit of rough-road driving involved (e.g. gravel roads, etc.)

Modern "cased" wheel bearings are extraordinarily robust; occasionally you get one that's bad from the factory, but not often. The usual cause of failures come after the FIRST one eventually wears out and stems from improper technique during the replacement operation which damages the replacement when it's installed, and then it quickly fails too (usually in the 20-50k mile range.)
 
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