Well, we had a trip to see family over the holidays and it ended up with me working on the RX more than I wanted to.

Trip was from Chicago to Houston to Space Coast Florida and back home. roughly 3600 miles....

MPG was poor on the first leg to Houston, 19.5-20 mpg. Just couldn't seem to get decent mpg, on the start of trip on the first overnight, just as we pulled out of the hotel, it made a lot of noise in the right rear. I called my Lexus guru and he said by the sound it might be wheel bearing. It made noise off and on for a while, and then all of a sudden, just went silent. My wife and I just stared at each other. ? what happened?

When I got to Houston and got a dry day to look, I found the caliper slides had seized up. To a point I couldn't even get the top caliper bolt out. To pry the caliper out to even get the pads off, took my 21 in beaker bar as a pry bar. I literally bent the hinge pin trying. I had those off only a couple months ago for new rear pads. I replaced both rear calipers with semi loaded calipers to get new brackets (NAPA best place for these). I put on new rotors too. Much better, drove it and felt and sounded great. And being on a trip I had much less tools than I am used to having. Made it much more time consuming.

Next leg of trip, down I 10 to Florida. Just as we got off city streets and onto I10, a new clicking noise showed up. I pulled over asap. Crap, sure enough, wheel bearing was loose. We had to drive 1200 miles on it. It wasn't a joyous drive. It wasn't handling well, it was pretty loose.

Took me 6-8 long hours to change it, it was so rusted in I had to (advised by my Lexus guru) to loosen the bolts on the hub to car and drive it turning wheel back and forth. Criminy, it took that to loosen it! And it STILL was stuck in the backing plate. It took hours of pounding and PB Blaster and scraping the lip to get it to start to budge. Finally it popped out. Yea! And now the part I ordered special from parts store (the more expensive one), didn't fit on the axle. Crap, it got on 1/4" and stopped. I had to order another bearing from another store and it fit like a glove.

NOT a fun vacation to spend time with family....

But alas, it is done and I got to do it in 85F weather instead of -10F to 0F 30 mph wind weather at home. I am thankful for that. It never let us down, but wasn't a fun drive in the deep south. Wish I could have enjoyed it more. We live in an awesome country though! MPG did improve, got best close to 24. Averaged 21-23 the after the wheel bearing was swapped.

 

I would have stopped and done anything to just tighten that nut down. You don't have to remove the wheel to get to it, but it would have helped. You are lucky that the axle shaft wasn't damaged.

 

Factory torque is IIRC >200 lb-ft, tightening it would make no diff. It can't damage the axle no matter what.

The brakes kept things in check, so nothing really can do too much, but it sure make some awful noises...