I purchased a pre-owned 2000 Eddie Bauer Explorer from a Ford dealer in May '06 because my band mate's father was the GM. the truck only had a little over 40K miles on it and seemed fine. In Fall '07 I began hearing what sounded like "tire noise", along with all the other typical symptoms of worn out wheel bearings. I'm somewhat mechanically inclined so I closely monitored the truck's condition while the sound continued to get worse and worse with miles/time.

Eventually I took it to a local mechanic for an evaluation and got an estimate for about $400 to replace both front wheel bearing. I should have jumped on that. Next I did my research and read that the wheel bearings on my truck were notorious for premature failure. I had an extended warranty from the dealer so at 68,481 miles I brought my truck to their service department for the repair.

They dismissed all of the claims about design flaws, recalls and bad wheel bearings. They installed new ball joints for cracking grease seals, repacked the wheel bearings and aligned the front end. The repair was partially covered by the extended warranty but the repacking of grease seals was considered maintenance, so I got stuck with a $316.68 bill. In the process of wearing out, the wheel bearings caused some terrible wear on my front tires so they got moved to the rear.

Now, 10K miles later I'm right back where I started with the "tire noise", the grinding/vibrating in the steering wheel and gas pedal. The tires I have on the front end of the truck will soon be eaten up and I'll have to replace them as well as the wheel bearings.

I started to hear a noise from the front tires whenever the I release the gas pedal,

then after a while i started to hear the noise at all times,. I took the my Explorer to the Ford dealer and they told " oh the mechanic says the problem is the front wheel bearing and that's going to cost you $770.00. I had them fixed it only to be told that there is another noise coming from the rear of the car and that that was my rear diff going bad and to be prepared to pay a couple of thousands dollars on that.

The thing is that FORD already work on my rear diff back when my car was only 45,000 miles old, they had to reseal the rear diff because it was leaking, now they tell me I have to replace it, that really sucks, never mind that I already reseal also the transfer case, I mean if you want to trow your money away, buy a FORD, they'll help you, and for what I hace read in this panel FORD is not taking ownership on this matter.