I have been noticing a slight hmm sound from front driver side tire. Tread is somewhat low but not bad. Jack it up and shook the wheel and looking over the bushings and nothing is cracked or ripped or loose. One thing I did notice is that both wheels will spin without and noise except the pads catching. Now when I spin the driver side wheel back words it’s grabs slightly and doesn’t want to move to well. Now the passenger side this doesn’t happen. The hmm is a hub bearing going bad I assume as I had another car in snowy weather and it slide and I bumped a curb and it made a lot louder sound and hub was bad. Maybe it’s not far enough gone to show looseness in the front end shaking it? Thanks for any help.

 

If it got your attention, it’s telling you it’s tired. I recommend you change both, the seem to expire in pairs.

 

Hey Steve ,

yea I have a pair I found was just curious if anyone had a hub only make noise but not show signs of loose. I would assume 100,000 mile mark is maybe the recommended time for them.

 

Noisy with no movement, yes, very common because the seals on the hub bearing holds the hub from moving more then a few thousands of an inch.

 

Loose is defined as 0.0015 inch end play. Are you that sensitive?

Are you taking into account that the front wheels are connected to the differential?

 

Yes that’s true about the differential. I always learned the humming was a true sign aka a warning haha. Have heard other ways of checking was to shake it and if it’s really bad I figured I would have noticed it driving but this is only the second vehicle I had that needed a hub. First one was a lease car so that was fixed for free and they couldn’t see any damage from hitting the curb so they replaced it under the warranty 😁.

Makes sense guys thanks!

 

I have replaced the hub at least 7 or 8 times on my HHRs. In every case, I could not detect any looseness in the bearing. The only symptom was a noise while driving. When I removed the wheel and spun the rotor by hand slowly, I could feel a slight "growl" in the bad hub.

In the old days, you could tell a bad bearing by looseness, but now they used double-row ball bearings instead of tapered roller bearings (for less rolling resistance). Typically it won't feel loose but will generate noise when it starts going bad. Obviously it WILL eventually get loose if you ignore the noise, but do this at your own risk. Consider the noise an early-warning system for the hub.

Steve