Diagnose my car's wheel problem, win the satisfaction of a job well done!

Factual Questions
1

Here’s the sordid tale:

My 94 Corolla has been vibrating pretty badly when braking at high speeds. This morning I jacked up the front of the car and noticed that there was a fair bit of resistance at a certain spot in the rotation of the left wheel. In fact, it was enough resistance to slow the wheel down to a stop with the car idling up in the air.

I took off the brake calipers and now the wheels turn freely, but I noticed a strange lateral wobble in the left brake disc when I look straight at it from the front of the car. I took the discs off and switched them to see if they were the cause of the wobble, but it remained on the left side. I then removed both discs and watched the bearing assemblies; the right one turns perfectly, but the wobble is evident in the left one.

The left front bearing is less than a year old; the left axle is original and has almost 200,000 miles on it. I’ve done all the bend-it-this-way-and-that tests I can find online, but I’ve got no free play, no clicking, no nothing aside from that damned wobble. I’m hoping this is a symptom of some bizarro CV failure, because I can fix that at home. I can’t do anything with a bearing assembly, and I just had the thing changed last year anyway.

Any ideas?

2

It’s almost certainly not related to the front drive axle or CV joint. It’s very likely that the left wheel hub is bent. The bearing will be compromised if not damaged in replacing the hub, so the proper repair is to replace both the hub and the bearing.

Possible causes include hitting a curb or pothole, overtightening of the lug nuts, and damage when replacing the bearing (very unlikely, as it should have been evident immediately after the bearing replacement).

3

Yeah, it looks like you’re right. Having looked at it a bit closer I don’t see how the axle could affect the movement in that way, but I was reeeeally hoping somebody would chime in with an “oh yeah, common problem, never would have guessed” type response.

That assembly looks like a right bastard to mess with. I think I’d rather just bring in the knuckle than put everything back together and drive it to the shop. I wonder if I can buy the whole knuckle as an assembly, with a hub and bearing already installed. Probably not. :frowning:

Thanks for your help.

4

It requires a press with proper accessories, and even then it’s rather a pain.

New, no. Used, yes. It’s a reasonable thing to consider.