Originally Posted By: eljefino
Here's what I think happened.
When you reassemble a press in FWD wheel bearing "typically" you have just a round "donut" of a bearing that presses, tightly, into the knuckle from the inside. Then the "spindle", the part with the lug studs, presses in from the outside. The press operator takes it easy jamming them together because he can wreck the brand new bearing if it isn't properly supported from below.
The car's axle has the proper taper to keep the bearing from being ruined, so the mostly-assembled knuckle goes on and they hope to have enough axle stub sticking through to start the huge nut, to pull everything together. The 150 to 200 ft lbs of the huge nut being tightened "should" do it but if the parts are the wrong temperature or something the friction could be too much to let the job do itself correctly. Maybe this could be due to rusty threads on the axle that's being reused, for example.
My camry has a nut that lets someone punch it into a machined slot in the axle to keep it from backing off. It wasn't punched before my clutch job and it isn't punched now. Rust is keeping it from backing off.
I think your shop didn't completely press your bearing in. It found its way closer together, over time. The nut's where it always been, but since it's not against the bearing tightly, it's been accused of being "loose".
But we'll never know. In the old days of RWD cars we used to tighten the front nut then back it off the specified freeplay as a routine maintenance checkup. Naturally bearings wear and this freeplay changed.
Imagine you're a parent and your daughter's off to college. She goes to a tire store and they say the front end's shot and it won't take an alignment and it's actually dangerous. How would the situation be similar to if she just went ahead and used her "emergency credit card" to do all the needed work, then, later, mama bear calls long-distance to ream them out?
I was thinking the same thing as I read through all of the posts.
The OP seems like he has a reasonable plan and has taken the good advice given to heart, which is good. My only criticism, OP, is that, while you may not intend to (nor have you conveyed any intent to us here) dramatically demand things from the previous shop, you have said you intend to add a little flair to your review. You were recommended to simply state the facts, but you seem set on adding more than needed to any negative online reviews.
You're 100% entitled to post whatever kind of review you want; however, I agree with a few others who have posted that you may be over-stating the risk of the things you're claiming. My wife made it onto the highway before experiencing a major death wobble that she needed to pull over for. Nothing had been done to her car in months, so it must have been some punk kid(s) who loosened all of her lug nuts to the point of moving around and making her think the wheel was going to fall off.
My point, is that it took this long for either the bearing to press further on and create a gap between all mating surfaces and the axle nut, or for the axle nut to back off, so I feel (without knowing for sure, obviously) that the vibration you felt (that you only made the connection with AFTER you were told the problem, right) would have slowly gotten worse, if at all, until it was noticeable enough to have checked out.
That fact that you keep stating that your wife and unborn child could have died is what people are taking issue with, not your right to be frustrated at the situation, which we all fully understand.
