What Have You done To Your Range Rover Today? Well it wasn't yesterday but last Thursday & I took my car to see @Gilbertd again as I have had an increasingly loud rumble at the front of the car. It's been coming on for a few thousand miles. At first I wasn't sure that it was present at all but over time it has got much louder & I have become increasingly more conscious of it. Richard concurred with my diagnosis of a driver's side front wheel bearing that needed replacement. As it happened in his garage he had a whole half-shaft with bearing & hub that he had nabbed when Marty cleared his UK workshop a while ago. There was no provenance on the state of the used wheel bearing but as Richard pointed wheel bearing failure on the P38 is uncommon & that as far as he knows the wheel bearings are original in his ex-police P38 with over 500K miles on the clock so not risky.
Changing the whole half-shaft including the hub & bearing assembly is the easiest way of replacing a wheel bearing. For those without access to a suitable press i.e. most of us, the simplest option is to buy a hub with a new bearing fitted but for a decent bearing (non-Britpart) that's pretty expensive compared to the cost of a used part (£0 in this case😀. Changing the whole half-shaft also means that you don't need to get undone the big nut that holds the hub on the end of the half-shaft.
The work all went smoothly & while some of the bolts were stiff to undo there were no great problems. Just a long breaker bar & a lump hammer was all it took so no heat was required & no nuts or bolts got rounded off. The only specialist workshop tool was an old brake disc that was bolted on prior to being struck with a sledgehammer to get the old half-shaft with hub assemble out of the front diff. A new ABS sensor purchased in anticipation of destroying the old one while removing it from the hub proved unnecessary as it pulled out easily.
Once it was all back together again I took it for a spin up & down the road to confirm that the rumble had gone but now I have it back home I've been getting a bit OCD about noises related to road speed. I came up to a roundabout yesterday & convinced myself that I could hear the wheel bearing again but then realised it was the thump-thump-thump burbling of a 4.6L V8 at low revs.
I am once again immensely grateful to @Gilbertd for help with work on the car as my contribution this time apart from chat was not much more than holding the half-shaft vertical while he rolled on a new rubber gaiter & cleaning up bolts that had traces of red Loctite.
Manningtree, UK & 22320 Saint-Martin-des-Près, France
2001 Range Rover Vogue 4.6L