This has not been my weekend. Car is a '95 850 10 valve N/A with about 241,000 on it. Friday night I was driving on the highway and the car started to shake and shimmy like my old Corolla used to do with a bad inner CV joint. I thought oh good the front end is getting worse.

Saturday morning I had both control arms and both out tie rod ends replaced (they were needed). On my way home I had a huge fuel leak at the rail and spent most of Saturday with that.

Sunday I went out for a nice drive with a nice tight front end again, and after a while I got a hot metal smell in the cabin, I pulled over to find nothing coming from under the hood. The front driver's side hub is really hot. I turned around and came right home, and on the way car started to chug while coming to a stop, and seemed to get worse when I applied the brakes.

This morning it drove fine for a little while, and then after a while when everything got hot, the chugging came back.

Is this a bad wheel bearing that happened to go bad right before this front end work? What else could it be?

 

If you are having driveability problems do not drive the car. Check it out first. Pull the wheel and see if the wheel turns. It's likely a bad caliper or bearing. Either way you need to get it fixed before you destroy other parts of the car or have an accident.

 

Ditto

If the caliper seized or froze and was able to apply that kind of pressure for you to be able to feel it dragging, the rotor should show signs of overheating (blue). If the rotor looks fairly normal it sure sounds like you have a bearing going out.

 

Found out it's sticking caliper. Thanks for the info!