growling roaring noise, front hub

[melmount]

How do I determine which wheel bearing is the one growling? I jacked it up. No play, I do hear some noise when i spin the pass wheel, not really any on the drivers. I just recently had drivers off(hub) when i did both ball joints. It seemed ok then. But i am not sure how to tell? The drivers felt ok when off. never screwed with pass side yet. It does growl a little when i spin the wheel.??(pass side)
any thought on veryfing???
thx

[hypocrisyB]

I replaced my driver side wheel bearing because it had some play in it. I was getting a growl noise due to a shot needle bearing which I also thought was coming from the driver side. I replaced the driver side wheel bearing (had to be done anyways) and the noise continued. Turns out, it was from the passenger side. (The needle bearing is part of the whole wheel bearing assembly)

If you're having the same problem I was with a needle bearing it might be hard to target just by driving and listening for the noise.

I don't know how safe it is to do this so I'm sure someone else will chime in: If you lock one of your hubs and leave the other side unlocked this will let you figure out which side has the bad needle bearing (if that's what's making your noise) The needle bearing makes the noise when the hub is unlocked and the needle bearing is able to spin on the axle shaft. The noise will go away when the hub is locked. Again, I’m not sure if how safe that is. Provided that the truck is an open differential and the driveshaft will spin freely when not locked against the transfercase I don’t see any harm. But that’s something you should check before actually doing what I said…mostly because I’m an idiot.

This is all under the assumption the growl noise you are hearing is in fact a needle bearing problem. Probably wouldn’t hurt replacing both wheel bearings anyways. I did both of mine and I’m glad I did.