had to help a friend replace a wheel bearing tonight in his gti. blew out on a normal drive to work, car would've been ruined if he didn't notice it as soon as it happened/ i love the car and all but the pain isnt worth it. have any of you had problems like this? if so what mileage were you at when it happened?

 

I replaced a rear one myself on an '03 Jetta at about 100,000 km. I've never had a wheel bearing "blow out". You can drive on one that is howling for a long time and change it at your leisure. Even the tiniest of scuffs will make for a rumbling wheel bearing. I have never seen one catastrophically fail.

 

Agree. I've never had a wheel bearing blow out. What exactly happened? Meaning, did it sieze or something like that?

I can't see a wheel bearing blow out. They tend to make a lot of annoying noise, you'll know what is going on, that's for sure.

 

Head gasket on 98 gti, that was fun ha. As for the wheel bearing we had a couple major rainstorms this year, I had to drove through some uncomfortably deep puddles, more like lakes ha, now one of my wheel bearings is creaking whilst creeping only. It's not a huge deal but it is a tad bit annoying. I'll change it if it gets worse, or if I sell the car for some odd reason ha

 

Noticed some grammatical errors after posting.. Damn iPod touch lol

 

idk exactly how it happened but when we got the wheel and everything off the bearing literally fell out in several different pieces. Somehow, when he was driving it had completely broken into pieces. The wheel was literally about to fall off if he had kept driving