2006 Acura MDX, Wheel Bearing, Ball Joint and Tie Rod End Replacement

Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive Vancouver, BC
http://pawlikautomotive.com (604) 327-7112
Mark: So we’re going to talk about a 2006 Acura MDX that you did quite a bit of suspension work on. What’s the story on this vehicle?

Bernie: Yeah, so this vehicle was brought to our shop, the owner had some concerns about the brakes. There were some noises that were happening with his brakes, so we proceeded to do a brake inspection and found something quite completely different. There was quite a few severely worn parts on this vehicle on In the front end on the left side is a left ball joint and tie rod end and it was severely worn. I’m going to share a video in a minute and the right rear wheel bearing severely worn, the wheels were just wobbling back and forth. So that’s what we found

Mark: So is that the full extent of what was happening with this SUV?

Bernie: Pretty much, as I said he brought it in for a brake inspection but the brakes themselves weren’t in too bad condition. There were a couple caliper sliders that were seized a little bit but it clearly wasn’t the highest priority on the vehicle. These other parts were much more urgent. I’ll share these videos right now because they tell a lot, we’re doing this a little

Mark: A quick exclamation folks, we’re having some technical challenges today, we switched computers and we’re going to do the cheap and cheerful version of how we share videos, so bear with us.

Bernie: Yeah, so this is from an iPhone through a webcam so let’s hope it’s good. But just before you look at this video, if you look at the wheel, my technician’s going to grab the wheel and you’ll see a lot of up and back and up and down wobbling, and we put a zoom inside the wheel and you can see the axel shaft moving. On our website, if you look at this post, the video will be much better. So here we go, at the centre if you can see it, there is some wobbling, quite severe wobbling. I’ll just share it one more time. Right in the very centre you can see the axle shaft wobbling back and forth. So that’s our rear wheel bearing, now in and of itself, that’s bad enough. That’s going to create a lot of growling noises when you’re driving downtime road and bangs and clunks, things like that. So if that wasn’t enough, so that was on the right rear of the vehicle on the passenger side, here is what we found on the front left which is even scarier. so if you look at the bottom right, that’s the ball joint you can see that thing jumping back and forth. That should not move at all, I’m going to share this one more time. If you look at that round sort of accordion shape piece, that’s a CV joint boot and if you look up right behind that, you’ll also see another joint like a ball type joint, that’s the tie rod end that that’s jumping around as well. So we had two critically serious, critical parts jumping around, severely worn.