Car is making a grinding noise, so I take to a local shop. They think driver side wheel bearing. The front tires don’t spin well and the bearings are old, so I said let’s do both front bearings. (BMW x1, 150k)

They call back and say it’s done, but the grinding noise is still there. They think it’s the front diff, and say I’ll need to take it to a transmission type place. They offer to waive the labour since my problem isn’t fixed, and I pay $585 (Canadian).

I leave and now there’s a tick-tick-tick clicking sound when I turn, and the mechanic said that’s the teeth of the diff, so I expected that.

I picked up my wife from work which is close, drove home, and when I went down into the parking garage the noise changed into a christmas-jingle-jangle metal sound and I parked and knew something was bad.

Called the big name transmission place, it says free towing on their website. They call a tow company to get the car.

So they’re telling me I need a new front wheel bearing, and an axle shaft. I tell him bro I just put new wheel bearings in 1 day ago. He said well you need a new one, they left a bolt loose and it’s all messed up here.

So he says $550 for one bearing (I just paid the other place the same price for 2 of them), $900 for an axle shaft (front drivers side) and $450 for the “free” tow because I don’t have catastrophic transmission failure which was never mentioned to me or listed…

$60 for gear oil

$450 for labour I think he said.

Anyway total was just shy of $2,500.

And that gets me back to the point where I brought my car in because it was making a sound which it’s still going to make unless the noise was magically coming from the axle shaft I guess.

What the heck is going on? What did I do wrong? What do I do now?

I’m waiting for the boss at the first place to call me back, maybe they have some advice or can help in some way.