Whirring from the front end perhaps somebody has removed your turbo and fitted a supercharger lmao

Do superchargers run blow off valves? If not, I can still hear mine

on another note, intestinal and I went for a lap (and a kebab) on Tuesday and he has no further clues, but I am now leaning towards tyres again and I may have to bite the bullet and fit 2 new ones.

What are the chances that the two used tyres I fitted were crook in exactly the same way?

also it might be your power steering pump on the way to crapping itself
or a vacum leak check all fittings and hoses for leaks

Wouldnt the power steering punp be engine speed related not road speed related?

Change your front wheel bearings, inner and outer. Bearings can look quite normal, but be quite worn. It only takes a few microns of wear and they're noisy as hell.

Mike

Thanks Mike. I have all the gear necessary now and spoke to a ford mechanic yesterday and he advised that the correct torque for the nuts should be 320Nm, which sounds like a bloody lot.

Anyone with a manual able to confirm or deny this?

It is a 35mm nut, looks like about 10mm thick on shaft that looks about 15-20mm diameter and I am supposed to torque this to 320Nm? I only have a 200 ft-lb tension wrench and 320Nm is 236 ft-lb.

Hi All. This will come as a surprise to probably none of you, but replacing the hubs fixed the problem.

For posterity, I thought I would write a brief bit on how I did it in case someone else comes to the same screeching halts as I came to.

Here is what I did and if there are any glaring errors, please correct me sooner rather than later. ( before the wheels fall off so to speak)

Remove the road wheel and dust deflector if there is one.

Twist the brake line so that it comes out of the retainer bracket under the top caliper bolt. This allows access to the bolt. The plastic clip has flats on the inside of it and when twisted the right way, will slide out of the bracket.

Remove the caliper bolts (15mm socket) and tie the caliper up to one of the top suspension arms so that it doesn't stress the brake line. I used cat 5 cable, but string, coat hanger whatever is to hand would do.

Remove the disc.

Gently remove the dust cover from the centre of the hub ( I will have to purchase 2 more of these as I wasn't too gentle. maybe not a bad idea if you are getting hubs anyway to purchase a pair). They are rubberised steel, so something sharp right at the rear and work your way around it.

Using a largish breaker bar ( I used around 350mm) and a 35mm socket, undo the nut device from the stub axle.

Slide the hub off the stub axle. One of mine was jammed onto the stub axle and I had to gently persuade it to come of by tapping it with a cold chisel and hammer. This removed the hub but left the rear seal shell and left the inner race firmly stuck to the stub for more attention from a cold chisel.

I cleaned the thread and stub gently with a wire brush and gave them a spray with Brake Clean and let them dry. I also cleaned the caliper bolts the same way.

Slide the new hub onto the stub.

I then put some Loctite 262 onto the thread and put the nut device back on. I torqued it to around 120Nm or 90 Ft-Lb with a tension wrench. I arrived at this figure after talking to several mates, one who has done this before (I should have asked him first right?)

Put the dust cover back on, brake disc on and refit the caliper. I fitted the bottom caliper bolt first loosely and then applied some Loctite to the top bolt and fitted it, I then removed the bottom bolt and Loctited it and torqued them both. I didn't have the torque specs for these so I just used a best guess (tight enough). I found that fitting one wheel nut to the bottom stud helped the fitting of all this by stopping the disc from moving.

Remove the bottom wheel nut and fit the dust deflector and road wheel., tighten the wheel nuts up. I actually lubricated the threads here too.

The things I found interesting were:

The bearings are ball bearings not roller.

The nut device looks like 3x 4 mm thick nuts in a sheet metal cage with a thick washer on the back.

The most likely cause of the original noise was the rusty water and bearing damage in the LHS hub.

When I fitted the LHS hub, it didn't align easily and jammed on the stub axle. I had to get a small drift in behind the bearing to tap the inner bearing shell to get the hub off before checking the shaft, realigning the hub and finally fitting it.

There looked to be some bash marks on the shaft which I guess were from original assembly, which is a little surprising to give every ford assembler a big hammer in the event that something doesn't fit.

What I guess happened was that the hub was incorrectly fitted in the factory as well and the fitter has just reefed at the hub assembly and buggered the inner seal. /CSI hat off

I will have a crack at attaching some photos of the nut assembly as this is the bit that had me stumped.

Thanks everyone for your input.

here goes

 

 

Attachments:

File comment: Some rusty water and vegemite inside the bearing. I wonder why it was noisy? P9010304.JPG [ 57.45 KiB | Viewed 282 times ]

File comment: Some rusty water from inside the bearing P9010300.JPG [ 61.2 KiB | Viewed 195 times ]

File comment: Ths is the remnant of the inner bearing on the LHS P9010297.JPG [ 56.38 KiB | Viewed 187 times ]

File comment: This is the clean shaft on the RHS P9010288.JPG [ 48.02 KiB | Viewed 242 times ]

File comment: This is the wheelnut P9010282.JPG [ 62.36 KiB | Viewed 263 times ]

here are some more

 

 

Attachments:

File comment: and yet more. I still wonder why ford went to so much trouble. wheelnut 3.JPG [ 66.16 KiB | Viewed 237 times ]

File comment: more wheelnut wheelnut 1.JPG [ 21.41 KiB | Viewed 180 times ]