How to find bad wheel bearing?

[Doyt W. Echelberger]

Great idea, Fred! It is good to get that one into the archives. It comes
closer to quantifying the sound from each hub, and could be combined with
touching the hub with the car on the lift, to pick up palpable vibration.
One more factor to point at which hub to crack first. And if two hubs give
loud readings, perhaps there are two bearings on the way out. I try to
remain open-minded about how many bearings are causing the concern.     Doyt
 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
At 08:45 AM 5/12/2002 -0400, you wrote:

>......snip........................
>Doyt, I've had good success using a contact microphone (the cheap kind you
>can buy from Radio Shock to record phone conversations) attached to the
>wheel hub. I hook it up to a portable recorder in the car and take the car
>for a run. You have to do comparative testing - even a good bearing makes an
>awful racket, so you have to find the noisiest bearing. This method also
>works when hunting down tranny and diff noises.
>
>Fred Munro
>'94 S4