What are symptoms of bad rear wheel bearings?

What are the symptoms of a bad rear wheel bearing?

Inquiring minds want to know. (Well, maybe not, but I want to know...;) )

Prior to replacing them on the V8, I was getting noises from the back end. Not high-pitched, just a bit of a whine.

Sometimes, as in the front bearings, a howl will develope, however, dead bearings are dry, usually, and you will pick up a clicking noise. Jack up the rear wheel, make sure it spins free and see if you can push/pull it, the wheel, and spin it and you will know.

Sometimes you can feel the bearings don't roll smooth, more herky-jerky (if that's a word). I just had a bit of noise I associated with the diff-until I replaced the bearings.
BTW, if the bearing really does fail, the outcome is not pretty-ask how I know.

The bearings in an MGB axle are so robust they nearly never fail.

I am replacing two bearings in the same axle as we speak.

One side because I am doing a wire wheel to bolt-on conversion, (15X6 VTOs here we come) and because I am doing the differential thrust washer thing at the same time. Might as well, don't cha know. ;-)

I am replacing the other side because I had to spend about two hours with a cutting torch in order to reduce the wire wheel hub and the end of the axle shaft to a pile of slag in order to get that side apart. The heat from all of that fried the bearing.

I have a mega pneumatic wrench that will pull 1200 p/f of torque and even that puppy wouldn't budge the axle nut. !!!

I'd like to meet the bruiser who put this stuff back together :-) As a side note, I had to use a normal 1/2" drive impact wrench to remove two of the spark plugs !! :-(

Oh yea, the bearing noise question. Usually a relatively low frequency rumble noise, increasing in frequency with road speed, most often coming from the UNLOADED side. If you hear the noise as being more pronounced when making a left turn go look at the left bearing first.

Jack

UUUUHHHHH,Jack,It would be the right bearing when turning left and vicey versey.:thumbsup:

That might be logical Martin, as in turning left the right bearing would be more loaded and it would seem that with the load it would make more noise, but every time I have encountered a failing axle bearing it has been on the UNLOADED side.

I suppose that if you were dealing with a bearing so bad as to have several square balls in it the extra load would cause more noise, but unless someone is nearly deaf they are going to hear "something wrong" before the failure gets that far along.

Jack

I would describe it as more of a growl. RAY

Mine was a growl which threw me off because I had a bearing fail in my 70 Camaro and it was a high pitched squealing (no Deliverance jokes please).

Y'all aint from around here are ya?

Jack's right. Unloaded bearing makes more noise than the loaded bearing. Same for front bearings...on any car.