<VV> Rear wheel bearings

[chuck mckinley]

Friends,
	In the 19 years I've owned it, my 63 Monza has never been driven more
than about 20 miles from home and back. Next week I'll be driving it
(one way) about 140 miles to my daughter's college, where she'll drive
it for the next 2-3 years. I'm not aware of any problems in any of its
components, but I'm a little nervous about whether the rear wheel
bearings might have a problem with 140 miles of highway speed (I-64 in
Virginia). As far as I know, they're the original bearings on the car.
The car has, very roughly, about 85,000 miles on the clock. My question
to you is whether those tricky bearings give you any sort of early
warning that they're about to fail, or whether they tend to give up the
ghost catastrophically and leave you suddenly riding on the backing
plates with no brakes at all. I've heard some spooky stories about this
and need to know what to expect. In particular, is there anything at all
I can check before I take this trip?

For what it's worth, the car always passes the annual safety inspection
in Virginia, and they check the running gear pretty thoroughly, but I
don't know if their checks are capable of detecting potential problems
in the rear bearings.

Your comments, ideas, and suggestions will be most welcome, as always.

Cheers,
Chuck