Wheel bearing? Highway noise?

Danilosilni · Post by **Danilosilni** » 12 Mar 2010, 23:39

I'm hearing sort of an echoing sound when driving on the highway coming from the rear. My wheels and balanced and have a good alignment so I'm thinking it could be the wheel bearing which many people have problems with. Any idea how to tell if they are damaged and what to look for? Thanks

Playn · Post by **Playn** » 27 Mar 2010, 14:23

Here is what I did to determine it was a rear wheel bearing in my xc90.

The noise from the vehicle was very loud at highway speeds. I took the car out on an interstate where I had two lanes to play with. Do this when there is no traffic around you. I got up to speed where the sound was the loudest and was in the right lane then rather quickly (but not dangerously) moved into the left lane. During the manuver the noise stopped, therefore I concluded that it was the left rear wheelbearing that was bad. I checked the right bearing by doing the same thing by changing lanes from left to right but the noise persisited with that manuver.

I ordered the hub and I believe it was something like $120 and installed it in about 45 minutes.

Disclaimer; Don't make any agressive moves on the road that you are not completely comfortable making and don't do it with traffic anywhere around you.

Danilosilni · Post by **Danilosilni** » 30 Mar 2010, 08:46

Decided to go the safe route and ordered both rear hub assembly and should be installing in a day or two. Thanks for your reply.

robo-volvo · Post by **robo-volvo** » 20 Apr 2010, 20:21

I have an 04 XC90 T6 with 70K miles on it and just replaced both rear wheel bearings. The left one went first at about 65K and it was causing a pretty good shimmy in the rear end you could feel and hear. Once this one was replaced, I still had quite a bit of highway noise (sounded like an alternating wow-wow-wow type sound) but no shimmy. Traced the noise to the right rear and suspected the bearing (since the left one departed the living). Replaced the right rear and the difference was remarkable. No shimmy and no noise. A huge difference. I spoke to the person who did the repair, an ex-Volvo tech. He said they used to order these bearings by the "pallet load", so it is pretty common for them to go. Don't waste your time balancing wheels or rotating tires like I did. They bearings are the most common failure.

XxJenoxX · Post by **XxJenoxX** » 20 Apr 2010, 20:37

I thought my wheel hub bearing was causing my grinding noise, so I had my friend replace it. Come to find out, that wasn't the noise but things were about to get ugly with those bearings anyway! So you can't always tell until it gets pretty bad. Better safe than sorry.