Wheel Bearing?

[Boxstard]

Originally Posted by Anker

Hub bearings wear us usually easy to diagnose. If the noise is there when turning one way and not when turning the other way it is almost certainly a hub bearing. Of course if bearings on both sides are gone there will be noise turning both ways, but that is quite rare. They usually go one at a time. The bearing will be fine and wear slowly until reaching a specific point of wear and then go quickly.

Right, by loading each wheel by sharp turn and acceleration/ deceleration, you can pretty much reproduce noise and ID bad bearing.

My right rear bearing became noisy at 69K miles, noticed shortly after I bought the car. Sharp left turn with full throttle induced more noise, but hard to hear with top down. It was apparently original bearing, German made FAG and when I took it out and apart surprisingly one ball was missing in the bearing, and the inner lace had scoring/ dent.

I replaced both sides with FAG bearings but one was slightly smaller in OD so that after press-fit it was still loose in the bore and I could move it by hands without heat... I bought a few more to sort out just in case and they were dimensionally comparable to the original bearings so I got spares for front end later. It only costed like $35 each but FAG quality deserves better...

I wish I can find road around here to safely do 100 mph for 20 min... Next time I get pulled over for speeding I'll tell the officer that I was trying to monitor bearing temp rise for diagnosis!