Kizashi Club

I had a curb hit a couple of weeks ago, as the 60% worn original Dunlop tires (at 10k miles!) failed me in an inch or two of snow/slush after being quite dissatisfied with them this winter (and only vaguely tolerant of them last year). That left me with some good scuffing on the rim, and an urge for new tires.

I got a new set of Continental PureContact tires installed and balanced, but noticed a bit of noise and vibration at specific speeds which I could feel in the steering. Thinking I might have a balance problem, I rotated my new set front to back, and the vibration remained the same. After some more careful observation, including taking some curves at highway speeds, I determined that I damaged the drivers side bearing in the curb hit. I suspect that the hub is slightly bent, and that is the cause of the vibration.

The available front wheel hub options I could find were limited. Timken ($200), SKF ($300), Suzuki ($350), or Centric ($130). I was going to order the Timken part, but it had gone out of stock at RockAuto, and other retailers were far more expensive. I decided to take a chance on the Centric part. It is from the Centric "Premium" line of wheels hubs, supposedly produced by common OEM suppliers. When I received the Centric part (401.48000) I was very pleased. The box was marked made in Japan. The part is actually from NTN, and is labeled as a HUB269T-4. The quality seems to be excellent.

It also appears to match the pictures of the Timken listing exactly, right down to a blue paint mark on one of the studs. So I suspect that Timken is selling the NTN part as well. For a low volume application, I'm not surprised by that. For the rear (which I don't need now) there are many more reasonable cost options, as Suzuki re-used the front/rear hub design from the Grand Vitara.

It gets installed tomorrow, so some time in the next few days I'll let everybody know my opinion on the part. Ideally, that's the kind of part where I hope I have no option at all and it just does its job.

Keep us posted.

I had bad experiences with OE front wheel bearings on my Mazda3. My OEM replacements installed at a Mazda dealer lasted only about 26,000 miles after the original set wore out at about 60K. I then bought TIMKEN bearings online and had them installed at a local shop for about half the cost. In this case, the aftermarket parts were just much better.

The new wheel hub is on, and all seems to be well. Time will tell how well the part holds up, but the quality seemed to be quite high when I had it in hand.

From the alignment info, it appears that the wheel that had taken the the curb hit is slightly bent. I had rotated it onto the back to rule out the wheel as the cause of my vibration issues. Now that wheel is out of spec on the alignment sheet.

I've ordered in a matching used 17" wheel, so I will probably get that swapped on when I have the chance. I was likely to replace it anyways due to the curb rash, but now I'd rather swap it out sooner than later.

You'll hate me for this, but maybe it will help somebody else in the future...

The wheel hub is covered by the powertrain warranty, so you could have had it replaced at no cost.

I've had a similar experience recently and I was lucky enough that the service manager from the former Suzuki dealership mentioned this to me.

No questions asked, the service taking care of the warranty tested it, concluded it was faulty and replaced it under warranty. Nobody mentioned anything about the visible scratch marks on the wheel.

The powertrain warranty does not cover accidental damage. If a dealer took care of that for you, you are lucky. I was not about to waste several hours of my time trying to scam my local service center and Suzuki with a bogus warranty claim. I know the hub damage was not due to a defective part, because I know exactly how it happened.

bdleonard wrote:The powertrain warranty does not cover accidental damage. If a dealer took care of that for you, you are lucky. I was not about to waste several hours of my time trying to scam my local service center and Suzuki with a bogus warranty claim. I know the hub damage was not due to a defective part, because I know exactly how it happened.

Very admirable, good for you.

My only good options were to file a claim through my insurance, or to just determine what's wrong and fix things myself. With a $500 deductible, I decided that total cost would likely not be much over that (if any). So far I'm in a total of $300 for the replacement hub, installation, and an alignment. It was another $100 for a good condition used replacement wheel (which includes a spare TPMS and center cap), plus $15-20 to have the tire swapped and balanced, and TPMS taken care of once the wheel arrives.

I figure that puts me out just under $450 total. Not cheap by any means, but fairly reasonable, and no pointless insurance claim. If it had been a defective factory part, that would be a different story all together. Heck, I've still got 14 months of bumper to bumper coverage left.