I've been troubled by a woo-woo-woo sound when I drive. It comes and goes, and doesn't respond to brake applications or turns that I've noticed. I replaced the carrier bearing on the driveshaft (along with its rubber toy from hell mount) and it didn't fix it.

So I decided to repack all the wheel bearings since I was doing the front brakes anyway. I had installed new bearings and seals up front about a year ago, and had used Amsoil grease, which I bought to test out. From my perspective it failed, since it had largely turned to slop.

The bearings and hub had been cleaned to the shine with brake cleaner to prevent breakdown from mixing dino and synth grease, but it still looked bad. I used most of the rest of the can to repack them, next time I'll use something else.


The rears were interesting, had not done them before or wrestled with the parking brake. I've been using Redline hypoid back there for some time, and it looks like it got past the inner seals, since the grease on the bearings was sparse and watery. Or it could be that I'm the first person to see them since the car was built 200k ago.

The important thing is that the bearings were in excellent shape; they were clean with no discoloring and no pitting or visible wear. I regreased them as an experiment, will check on them in about 10k and see how the dino grease (Castrol, nice and greasy feeling, but never used it before) holds up and whether the seals are the problem.

But it got me wondering about how well the Redline would do for a lubricant for them by itself, and whether greasing them really makes a difference if I'm using a very high quality hypoid back there. I know what Bentley says, and what a Volvo service manager would say, but those bearings were really spiffo, esp. for being 200k old. They had the slightest bit of looseness, but otherwise looked like new.