Do Maestros 'eat' wheel bearings quickly?

[John C]

I've heard that the bearing surface breaks up quickly and so you end up changing the whole lot frequently -is this true?

[Guest]

the early 2 piece bearings can break up more quickly, thouigh you just need to change them. the later cassette bearings are ok and should last more than 50000 miles before change.

[xamtex]

the early 2 peice bearings were prone to failure mainly due to the nut being set to the wrong torque...i looked after a fleet of maestros from day 1..we had to change front bearings sometimes in less than 10k miles...after a while replacement bearing kits came with washers of different thicknesses...so you could get the nut torque correct and get the split pin in the hole.
it seems that it was common practice on the production line to set the nut torque then tighten a bit more till the split pin would go in thus overloading the bearing causing premature failure.
the later bearings had the staked nut so you could get the torque right then lock it in place.

[E_T_V]

Two piece bearings will rarely see more than 40k miles.

Single piece bearings are often original at 100k.

Vans tend to eat bearings faster than the cars (same bearing) and the drive flange gets worn necessitating replacement (doesn't happen on the car for some reason).

All this applies to the fronts. The rears are generally very reliable on all models.