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Wheel Bearing Noise Diagnosis – What to Listen and Look For

Wheel Bearing Noise Diagnosis - What to Listen and Look For

Keeping an average car on the road is much more complicated than an average driver realizes. The number of mechanical parts and components that have to work in unison is impressive. Most of us know why a burnt clutch is a problem or why we should visit a mechanic if we hear a strange noise coming from the engine bay. However, there are so many other, invisible and often forgotten parts of this mechanical collective that can also fail, including wheel bearings. Wheel bearing noise diagnosis is often the best way to figure if you’re dealing with a bad bearing. Join us as we discuss how to diagnose a bad bearing, what to look and listen for.

These are called tapered roller bearings, which unlike 'sealed' wheel bearings, require occasional packing with grease.  This type has been more or less replaced with sealed type bearings.

What is Wheel Bearing and What Does It Do?

One of the main conditions necessary for a car to be functional is for the wheels and tires to spin freely. The second condition closely follows that and states that wheels need to be attached to the car.

Having a free-spinning wheel that is suspended by various suspension components, is steerable, and fixed in terms of geometry is a complex mechanical problem that has a rather simple solution – bearings.

Bearings are everywhere around us. You’ll find them in cars, bikes, industrial machines, heck, even skateboards. They all work the same way.

Anatomy of a Wheel Bearing

Most bearings have three main components – the outer and inner race and a set of precision machined metallic balls. The outer race is bolted to the wheel hub and suspension, while the inside race is connected to the CV joint and your driveshaft. The bearings in between allow the inner race to spin freely while the outer race remains static.

Most modern wheel bearings are integrated into a wheel hub. Although a more efficient design, having everything bunched up together means that you can’t service the wheel bearing itself. Instead, you have to get a whole new hub. Speaking of replacing wheel bearings, why do they fail, and how often does that happen?

A sealed wheel bearing kit that comes with a brand new hub.

Why Do Wheel Bearings Fail

Every part of a car has a fixed service life, and so do wheel bearings. If you were to pop open one of these, you’d find that the entire space between the two races is packed with grease.

That grease is there to lubricate the bearings and keep the friction levels in an already low-friction environment at a minimum. All of that works well for around 100,000 miles on average, given that the vehicle wasn’t driven harshly and that it was well maintained. Then wear sets in.

If it wasn’t, you’d run into several issues. The most common cause of wheel bearing failure is water or debris getting inside what is otherwise a hermetically sealed space. Once you introduce water and debris, the grease will evacuate the space between the two races, leaving the bearings without lubrication, thus much more prone to wear. Even worse, where there was once grease, now there’s debris.

Once foreign bodies are introduced between a wheel bearing and a race, the whole system starts to experience friction. As time goes by, this friction will wear out the ball bearings, which completely changes their geometry, and prevents them from doing their job. As a result, you’ll get noise coming from one side of the vehicle, or potentially both sides, depending on which bearing has failed.

Diagnosing Wheel Bearing Noise

Wheel bearing failure can, in some cases, be catastrophic where the entire bearing disintegrates. Fortunately for everyone, there are usually plenty of warning signs before that happens. One of the most common symptoms of a failing wheel bearing is noise.

As things start to wear out and heat up inside a compromised bearing, the metal on metal contact creates this whining sound that gradually becomes louder and louder.

There are components to wheel bearing noise – the speed of the vehicle and the load applied to the affected wheel.

Speed

Wheel bearing noises become louder with speed. That is one of the best ways to tell whether the noise is coming from the wheel bearing or if it’s originating in/around the engine. RPM induced noises can be diagnosed while the vehicle is static. Speed-dependent noises usually indicate tire or wheel hub problems.

That being said, a louder engine can make things difficult. If your engine matches this description, you will have to listen for changes in sound very carefully or skip down to the part where we discuss hands-on methods of diagnosing a bad bearing.

Relying solely on speed to diagnose the noise can be challenging in cases where the bearing is only starting to fail. Loud tires can often mask the noise it is producing. But fear not, there are a few more options as far as diagnosis goes.

Load

Aside from speed, load also affects the noise you might hear from a bad bearing. As you turn, the weight of the car shifts to the opposite of your direction of travel. In other words, when you turn left, the weight of the car is shifted to the right side of the vehicle. Even though you have the entire suspension system to balance out this weight distribution, a considerable amount of load is exerted on the wheel bearing itself.

This bit of information reveals a very simple way of testing whether your bearings are shot. Simply find a twisty road with plenty of sharp turns and push your car through its paces. You don’t need to go too fast, but you should go fast enough to load each side of the vehicle.

If turning in either direction results in a more pronounced noise coming from that side of the car, you’ll know exactly which wheel is the culprit.

Other Means of Making a Diagnosis – The Hands-On Approach

Once you’ve tested for noise and narrowed down its source, it’s time to jack up the car and confirm your findings. Before we get any further, a quick word of advice – make sure that your vehicle is securely lifted and suspended off the ground.

Only jack the vehicle up on the flat ground with wheel chocks behind your rear wheels. Also, use adequate jack stands and don’t rely on your floor jack to hold the car in the air. Once you’re all set, it’s time to get your hands dirty.

Inspect the tires and check for uneven wear. Although many suspension issues tend to show uneven tire wear, it is still a good indicator that something is off.

Next, what you want to do is grab the wheel at the 12 and 6 o’clock position. Rock the wheel back and forth like you’re trying to take it off the hub. If there’s any give or play, there’s a good chance that your bearing is shot. But, there’s a way to be certain.

Wiggling the wheel is a good method of finding issues related to suspension components. To be absolutely sure that it’s not a tie rod or a bad bushing, position yourself in a way where you can wiggle the wheel while observing these components.

If you notice that a tie rod is moving or that your upper control arm bushing has some play to it, it could cause the wheel to wobble.

Last but not least, put the car into neutral and spin the wheel by hand as fast as you can. A bad wheel bearing will produce noise even if the wheel is spun by hand. It’s not the 100% fault proof way to diagnose a bad wheel bearing, but it’s usually a good tell.

How Do I Know If I Have a Bad CV Joint or Wheel Bearing?

Considering that both the wheel bearing and the CV joint create noise from roughly the same location when they go bad, it can sometimes be hard to figure out what is causing the noise. That being said, the noises these parts make when they fail are vastly different.

For one, a bad CV joint makes a rattling noise compared to the constant growl or whine coming from a bad bearing. Furthermore, a bad CV joint usually makes noise only when you’re turning as that’s when it’s under load.

Replacing a Wheel Bearing?

Replacing a wheel bearing these days requires getting a complete wheel hub assembly. On the one hand, this simplifies the repair since you don’t have to press out the broken bearing and then press in a new one. However, a complete wheel hub is always much more expensive than a standalone wheel bearing.

That being said, if you drive an older vehicle, there is a good chance that you can get away with replacing only the bearing. You’ll need to consult your mechanic or take a look at the workshop manual for your vehicle to be sure.

If you’re about to replace the wheel bearings on your car, it’s a good idea to replace them in pairs. Even if the other isn’t producing any sounds, having one wheel bearing fail is a good indicator that the other side is about to go as well.

Only Use Quality Parts

When the time comes to replace your wheel bearings, do yourself a favor and get a set of quality OEM parts. Getting the cheapest part you can find is a great way to guarantee another trip to the mechanic or another day fixing your car if you’re into DIY.

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7 thoughts on “Wheel Bearing Noise Diagnosis – What to Listen and Look For

  1. The torque for wheel bearings is vehicle and sometimes model dependent. Some are really quite low and, as mentioned above, some are relatively high. If you’re not checking the manual, you stand a good chance of doing it wrong. A complete wheel bearing failure can just be irritating…or if it happens at the wrong speed and maneuver (sharp turn on a narrow, winding mountain road for instance) possibly fatal.

    1. Apologies, to clarify, generally on drive wheels the axle nut is what applies the substantial force to tighten the bearing and remove all lateral play. For example, on the Classic SAAB 900, the torque spec for the axle nut is 222ft/lbs of torque.

    2. Nonsense; lots of cars specifications call for torque settings that are very high. Read your repair manual and always follow the manufacturers recomendations.

  2. What happens when you hear a squeak, squeak noise when turning a corner in the rear. Does a bad bearing have a continues noise or can a bad rear bearing have that squeak, squeak noise?
    thanks….

    1. I would expect that a squeak is a suspension matter, maybe a bushing in the trailing arm or anti sway bar if your car has those. Possibly also that the spring has worn through its perch.

      A bad bearing is more likely to be continuous. Bearings groan more loudly than bad tires. Sometimes swapping tires front to back on the same side can be useful to track a noise. If the noise moves with the tire, there’s your faulty component.

    2. One thing you can try is jacking the wheel up that is squeaking and rotate it around, in attempt to pinpoint the noise. In my experience, this noise is usually brake related, where you have a hotspot or some deposition on the rotor. When the spot passes under the pad you can get a squeak. Almost all OEM calipers are meant for an extremely small amount of contact/drag. You can’t rule out a wheel bearing though, or some kind of rubbing on the wheel or brake rotor dust shield. Hope that helps!

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