Wheel Bearing/Hub

[RobertISaar]

this thing..... is angering me.

 

so now based on sound/vibration alone, i have no idea which side did it, but one of the wheel bearings is going.

 

the problem is that it's intermittent and it hasn't happened again for ~400 miles now.

 

 

 

headed from camden to manistee last weekend, about a 250 mile trip one way, about 100 miles in at 70MPH, i get this awful single prop plane sound coming out of the car, sounded like the rear, i had assumed the driver's side due to the following 2 days it had sat soaked in brake fluid due to a failed wheel cylinder.

 

anyways, awful plane noise quickly included the world's most overpowered vibrator for a good 30 miles, then the sound cleared up for a little while, then came back, cleared up again, happened pretty much all the way up to manistee. while in manistee, same issue, but no vibration, probably due to the significantly lower speeds of being in-town. a little while after all of the noise started, the car was VERY sensitive to steering input. quite a few times i changed lanes and swung around with some unintended aggressiveness. while fun, it wasn't very reassuring.

 

anyways, car sat for a few hours for a wedding, come back out to go home, made noise for a little while in town and getting back on the highway, but no vibration that i can recall.

 

while on the highway, only a few times did it actually start making it's noise again, no vibration. usually happened after a transition in road surface. got home without incident.

 

 

 

and now today, went to town and back, no noise or vibration at all....

 

 

 

so what do i do now? i assume i can lift the rear and attempt to move the wheels around to see how much play is present? i assume pretty much anything that is detectable by eye means it's bad. if i can't see movement on the rear.... testing the front shouldn't be that bad since i have ~5000 mile balljoints up there, so i shouldn't have to worry about those giving me a false impression either.

 

 

 

tl;dr: why does this car have to be such a PITA?

[rich17]

Its a GM? lol. What I would do is see if theres one heating up on the inside. Basically drive the car and see if one is hot to touch on the back side.

[RobertISaar]

did that already the first time it happened, immediately hit up a rest stop and all 4 corners felt roughly the same.