Faulty Wheel Bearing?

[jay.mac201152]

Hi Guys my names James I'm new to the forum and have been a Lexus owner since may 2019.

As of yesterday 18th April 2019 I have noticed a tapping/knocking noise on my Lexus IS250 F-sport RWD 2011 Mileage 73k which seems to be coming from the front end of the vehicle  I have owned the car for nearly a year and have done roughly 4k miles the car has full Lexus service history I had it in for a full service and MOT on the 17th of February 2020 at a Lexus dealership only issues noted was that the front brake pads were 80% gone and also slight wear to the brake discs which I decided to replace my self a week or so later. I have had no issues with the car since, brakes have been working brilliantly. On the same day that I noticed the tapping/knocking noise, I did pull out of a junction with a very bumpy road surface turning right a bit aggressively causing a slight wheel spin and the traction control light to turn on whether or not this has caused it I don't know but this is the only thing I can think of which may have caused damage to the car as there has been no issues before this. All four tyres were renewed on the 22nd of September 2019 and wheel alignment carried out. The noise is not noticeable when taking off, it really begins at about 15 - 20mph the tempo of the noise increases with vehicle speed however the strangest thing to note is that the noise gets much louder when turning the steering wheel left and maintains a lesser sound when steering wheel is straight then when turning right seems to fade away to the point where I can't actually hear it anymore. Took the car to a Halfords auto centre as this was the only place open at the time the guys got it on the lift in front of me and performed what look liked a very thorough inspection checking for play, oil leaks etc. they could not find anything and advised to wait for the problem to worsen to help with further diagnosing the fault at a later date which I'm not really too comfortable with. I have spent the whole day trying to find answers to this problem and to be honest its quite a difficult thing to pin down first thing I came across was the rear axle CV joints so I got the car up and took the rear wheels of none of the rubber boots are damaged, torn or leaking and all the various rods attaching to the wheel hub are solid with no play what so ever. I found a previous post on here where a guy described a knocking sound and found that it went away when he change his front wheel bearing however looking at various examples of wheel bearing faults on YouTube the knocking sound doesn't seem to relate to a faulty wheel bearing but rather a humming/squealing noise which I'm most definitely not experiencing although the fact the noise is louder when turning left and non existent when turning right does relate to a faulty wheel bearing. I have attached a sound recording of the noise its picked up most noticeably in the first 10 secs and then again at 18secs to 31secs the rest of the recording isn't too great if anyone has any advice on what this could be I would be most grateful being self-employed now for under a year and with the corona virus epidemic putting us on lock down I have zero income and would really hope I could do the work myself where possible.

~Kind Regards~

BH1 4DH 2.m4a

[steve2006]

Hi James and welcome to the LOC.

For some reason I cannot view your video file, probably an ipad thing as there have been 10 other downloads.

Have you checked your disc shields as they sometimes get bent when replacing the discs and end up catching them.

[Beamish]

 

Hi James,

Welcome to the LOC.

From your audio it doesn't sound like a wheel bearing to me.

I would be inclined to revisit the last job you did on the brakes and make doubly sure that everything has been tightened properly  -  caliper bolts, wheel nuts etc. It has to be related as the noise only appeared afterwards.

Best of luck,

Dec.

[Malc]

3 hours ago, steve2006 said:

I cannot view your video file

Steve, it's sound only but I can't interpret it I'm afraid

[jay.mac201152]

Hi Guys thanks for taking the time to get back to me so quickly. So I decided to remove the brake calliper and rotors today so that I could get a good look and listen of the wheel hub.
 

So there is a bit of a clicking noise when I span it but I didn’t sound anything like some of the examples I saw on YouTube so I’m fairly confident there is still some life left in them. I have attached a video recording of this I’m not sure what a good wheel hub should sound like so if anyone has any experience with this I’d greatly appreciate it as I am considering whether or not I should just replace them 😅

As you rightly suggested Beamish 👍 after inspecting the wheel hub I went back over the brake job and made sure that all the bolts and wheel nuts were torqued to the correct specifications and have now found the noise to have gone so I’m going to say that what was mostly likely causing this noise was loose wheel nuts I must have incorrectly torqued them after doing the brake job and I guess it’s just taken a few months for them to loosen off to the point where the wheel was knocking against the rotor.
 

Sorry Steve that you couldn’t open the audio recording it was recorded on my Iphone which I then emailed to my laptop and opened on groove music to test it this may have changed the file extension making it incompatible with your device.

Thankfully now all is well and I’m extremely grateful for you guys input if anyone does get a chance to check the video of the wheel bearing noise let me know what you think 🤔

~Kind Regards~

[Mihanicos]

Hi,

Check that the brake pad clips are fitted correctly. The clip side facing the rotor should be in contact with the caliper side facing the rotor. When fitted correctly in this way, there is about 1cm gap between the rotor and the clip. 

Chris.

 

[Mr Vlad]

Hi Jay. Just read your thread. Oh yes. Wheel nuts. Always torque correctly and check again after 100 miles. Blimey I remember when I worked in a huge warehouse that the fork trucks were always making that noise. Loose wheel nuts. Glad all is well now.