Wheel bearings... How long until my wheel falls off?

[Sibbers]

Quick update. Replaced my hub and it drives nicely. The one i took off however looks like new, still has grease in and spins amazingly well in my hand. I have noticed that a vibration at speed has gone, and there is obviously no noise to worry me anymore either. I was shocked to see what looks like a brand new set of bearing internals. Weird. is that normal for a failed or failing wheel bearing?

[clai cerrig]

Could be nothing wrong with the bearings and it was the wheel not fitted flush to the hub causing the vibration if you have any post up pictures of the hub / bearings etc for a bit of a post mortem

[ANDY black s13]

They can look ok, but the noise can be the outer bearing race has got one or more dents from the impact of potholes
thats my theory from working on buses and coaches,when dismantled you can study the races and see the tiny dents
the inner race will be dented as well but easier to see on the outer, other is one of the bearings has
become non round as in the same type of impact damage can break a chunk off of the bearing ball/or roller
the resulting flat spot of sorts makes the sick/all is not well noise,
often not an instant thing and the noise starts many miles later,then gets worse as it wears further
rock hard suspension and rubber band profile rubber + our potholed roads = wheels/tyres and bearings will suffer an early death

[ANDY black s13]

Could be nothing wrong with the bearings and it was the wheel not fitted flush to the hub causing the vibration if you have any post up pictures of the hub / bearings etc for a bit of a post mortem

agreed it could have been a wheel fitment issue causing the vibration ,I'm going to go with the bearing was fubar'd as the noise has gone
and if it was the wheel was loose it would have fallen off early last week

[Si]

I changed a bearing on my FD a while ago, it was making a ridiculously loud rumble, but there was no play in it whatsoever. But when I took it off it pretty much fell apart in my hand!

[ANDY black s13]

that's never a good sign when that happens
at least that confirmed it was fcuked if you had any doubt beforehand

[Si]

Yeah, but the problem now is there's still a lot of road noise

SO I've taken the logical step of SORNing it until the problem goes away

[Sibbers]

Haha great advice gents, cheers. I'll get a pic up and you can see it at some point. I think you're right though in that it is buggered just not obviously (unless it has a 350kg or so resting on it).