The low milage may be the reason for the bearings to fail. The bearing have done more sitting  then driving. 5000 k a year for 16 years at 30k a hour and then be expected to  roll like a champ 

One front bearing on my 2001 Olds Aurora went , so I replaced both ....had 205K ,so I wasn't upset . My experience with early bearing failure was with used Chrysler products , when I was in the car business , not GM or Ford .

I worked for a GM dealer for 9 months (2008?). I used to like GM, after that I don't really care them much any more. Wheel bearings, control arm bushings, sway bar links, body ECU's, brake rotors, etc all got changed like diapers.

I guess if the car wasn't driven often enough the seals could dry out (as Slim suggests), stick, then rip, causing the bearing to fail.

I do know the history of the car actually. It's a one owner car that was owned by my next door neighbours mother. It's never been out of Ontario and I know for a fact the grand kids never drove it (which is a good thing as the middle grand kid had a nasty habit of getting drunk and running into things). We got it with late 60's km's on it and it has less than 80 on it now (the wife has had it closer to two years now that I think about it). The cost to repair isn't the issue, the fact that they both failed with so few km's on them is what bothers me.

It's not a big deal really, we got the car cheap enough that it can be considered disposable .... we'll see how it holds up, maybe it's my wife abusing it, she did enjoy the Jacka$$ movies

X2.  Its pretty hard to find any , made in North America parts these days. Its mostly offshore nowadays.

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i think alot depends on the origin of the parts. the big three use a substantial amount of offshore components with questionable quality.

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Your low mileage theory on the Cadaver-lear  has me wondering now .......long story , medium length .

Several years ago we ( dealer )  had a 1998 Neon traded in ....it was a 10 year old car driven , literally , by an old spinster to the church and to the grocery store , with 39 ,000 Kms . It was a simple car with A/C , automatic and a radio . Personally I don't like Neons  but  wife was needing a car since our lease was about finished on the family second car . Happy Wife , Happy Life , right ? She liked the car so I bought it for the trade in value $ 1200 . In 3 years she managed to get the mileage up to 74,000 Km but then her illness forced her to stop driving .  We did have to put a front wheel bearing on that car even with the low mileage . ........I had just chalked it up to cheepo parts from Chrysler .....hard to say .

To finish the story , I went into work one morning with the object of posting the car on Kijiji and a guy walks in looking for a $1500 car for his kid's first car . I asked " what are you seeing in your travels for $1500 ?  He says  " High mileage and /or rust ". ............ I tossed him the keys to my Neon for him to check out ......" how many miles" , he asks ..........I'm not telling you  . So out the guy goes and looks it over . I had cleaned it nicely and everything was original on the car , paint , body , no accidents etc.  He did a pretty thorough inspection , as he should , and came back in ...." 74 K on a 13 year old car ?????   .......Yep . SOLD ! So the car didn't cost me anything in spite of early bearing failure . 

-- Edited by teejay99 on Thursday 4th of February 2016 06:11:50 PM

We're not talking cup and cone stuff Joe. They can be greased.

These days their called assemblies and you won't find a grease boobie no how no where.

Think old school CV shafts they started using back in the early '70's ?

JMO

I just replace the bearing on our 2001 Sunfire (last week)   15 years old and 191g km    

I replaced wheel bearings on our 07 Suburban  9 year and 230g km 

 

I think all brands use up parts...   I used to afford to just trade them    Now I poor senior on big pension from Canada  

 

I worked for T.R.W. St Catharines a number of years. In the 80's we were pounding out hubs and spindles for G.M. . Our tolerances were tight and our fall-out was minimal. Then G.M. Buffalo took the business back once we got them over the hump. They manufactured them in a forming process. Our's were forged. Needless to say, their quality fell off.
T.R.W. has gone through major changes in the past 10 years. It's been chopped up, parted out and sold to the lowest bidder. Blackstone, T.F. somethingorother, and now THK, a Japanese company. I've spoken to a couple friends who still work there. Camera's everywhere, if your machine goes down for more than a couple minutes the Foreman is right there. I understand lean operation, cost effective process control, but I'm told it's not a pleasant working environment any longer, kinda hostile actually. It's returning to the sweat shop it was in the early days.....as are most of our manufacturing companies today. We're quickly becoming another third-world manufacturing supplier.

Smokin Joe wrote:

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Iwannagofast wrote:

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I worked for T.R.W. St Catharines a number of years. In the 80's we were pounding out hubs and spindles for G.M. . Our tolerances were tight and our fall-out was minimal. Then G.M. Buffalo took the business back once we got them over the hump. They manufactured them in a forming process. Our's were forged. Needless to say, their quality fell off.
T.R.W. has gone through major changes in the past 10 years. It's been chopped up, parted out and sold to the lowest bidder. Blackstone, T.F. somethingorother, and now THK, a Japanese company. I've spoken to a couple friends who still work there. Camera's everywhere, if your machine goes down for more than a couple minutes the Foreman is right there. I understand lean operation, cost effective process control, but I'm told it's not a pleasant working environment any longer, kinda hostile actually. It's returning to the sweat shop it was in the early days.....as are most of our manufacturing companies today. We're quickly becoming another third-world manufacturing supplier.

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 Trw was actually sold to a German company ZF Friedrichshafen in a 2 billion dollar deal. You are correct I would not want to work at any manufacturing facility nowadays. 

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 You are correct Joe, but for that sale to go through they had to give up the linkage / suspension / brakes business to THK. It had something to do with owning too much market share. When I worked there TRW was monstrous in size and into everything from Automotive to Aerospace , Electronic Date collection, etc. Huge once..... but no more.

supernash wrote:

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My GP was 'humming' and I replaced a wheel bearing (hub).

Well, 30 days 2 hours 43 minutes 53 seconds later, that POS was howling and grinding.

Grabbed another at the local Wreckers for $50.

I'm a big supporter of my local yards for most stuff. 

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I had a similar experience.  I used to own a 1985 Eagle Wagon (completely loaded, leather, air, cruise, p-seats, tilt, 4wd, etc etc etc .... it was an AWESOME car).  One of the front wheel bearings started to make noise.  I went to the local AMC dealer and bought a new bearing (as I recall the bearing got pressed into the spindle) and had one of their mechanics press in the new bearing.  Within a year that new bearing was starting to make noise.  I took the spindle/knuckle out of the car, removed the seal and discovered that the retaining ring that gets pressed on after the bearing goes in, had a split in it.  I may be wrong, but I can't see how that could have possibly split at any time other than when it was initially pressed in (meaning I think it got damaged during install by the AMC dealer mechanic).  At that point I decided I was not going to waste any more money at the dealer so I headed to the wreckers and bought a used spindle for cheap at the U-pick yard, installed it myself and never had another issue with that front wheel bearing.  Ironically, in the next year or two that wrecking yard posted a sign stating that although they did separate cars by manufacturer, they would no longer be designating any space to AMC products   The problem I see with grabbing a Cavalier/Sunfire hub from the wreckers is that IF the issue is poor design from GM in the first place, I could very easily be installing a part that is on the verge of failure.

 

The bearings I installed are Moog (on sale for $79 ea) and Canadian Tire claims they have a three year exchange warranty ..... we shall see 

 

 

 

 

-- Edited by chips on Friday 5th of February 2016 09:52:09 AM

JPB wrote:

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Iwannagofast wrote:

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Smokin Joe wrote:

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Iwannagofast wrote:

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I worked for T.R.W. St Catharines a number of years. In the 80's we were pounding out hubs and spindles for G.M. . Our tolerances were tight and our fall-out was minimal. Then G.M. Buffalo took the business back once we got them over the hump. They manufactured them in a forming process. Our's were forged. Needless to say, their quality fell off.
T.R.W. has gone through major changes in the past 10 years. It's been chopped up, parted out and sold to the lowest bidder. Blackstone, T.F. somethingorother, and now THK, a Japanese company. I've spoken to a couple friends who still work there. Camera's everywhere, if your machine goes down for more than a couple minutes the Foreman is right there. I understand lean operation, cost effective process control, but I'm told it's not a pleasant working environment any longer, kinda hostile actually. It's returning to the sweat shop it was in the early days.....as are most of our manufacturing companies today. We're quickly becoming another third-world manufacturing supplier.

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 Trw was actually sold to a German company ZF Friedrichshafen in a 2 billion dollar deal. You are correct I would not want to work at any manufacturing facility nowadays. 

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 You are correct Joe, but for that sale to go through they had to give up the linkage / suspension / brakes business to THK. It had something to do with owning too much market share. When I worked there TRW was monstrous in size and into everything from Automotive to Aerospace , Electronic Date collection, etc. Huge once..... but no more.

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          ^^^ All the Tillsonburg plants are now under this name; Gone Gone Gone :nod

 

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The spruce st plant in Tillsonburg is still under TRW (plant 4 ) 

I changed the ones in my HHR last summer. $49 each from Auto Zone.. with a lifetime warranty..........so far so good.............. on the other hand I replaced the rotors and brakes with a Cdn supplier, one rotor was so far out of balance I threw it out after a month...............and they would not stand behind it at all...............

I work for a manufacturer of brake pistons. we sell our oem rejects to the aftermarket........... So I would not be surprised of bearings and other parts are similar.............

and we supply every car manufacturer you can imagine to all corners of the world, For once Canadian made is going to Japan, China, Korea, South Africa, Europe and many other locations...............

so that being said, there are good and bad parts coming out of the aftermarket.............you never know what you will end up with these days.