Yeah I feel like I’ve been gaslit about this noise because EVERYTHING points to wheel bearing on drivers side. I’m going to take it to a family friends shop when I’m back home for thanksgiving and get ANOTHER opinion.
It is not a very rewarding job, the labor is only about 1.0 to 1.5 hours to replace each hub and bearing. If the noise is still there after replacing a wheel bearing, the technician will lose half a day of pay in efforts to correct the problem.
Have you asked for both left side hub and bearings to be replaced?
Are you suggesting someone should throw parts at the issue? Doesn’t sound like you.
Not really. If a mechanic won’t commit to a remedy to eliminate the noise, will the customer? He believes the left side wheel bearings are making noise. Vehicle owners generally spend hours in their vehicles, plenty of time to access the origin of the noise, front/back/left/right. Technicians are expected to locate a noise during a 15 minute road test and 30 inspection.
Let’s take the time to set up the Chassis Ears and road test: sounds like wind noise and tire noise. That is what you will hear from 4 microphones mounted under the car. But perhaps more noise is detected from the left rear. Now the technician has 2 hours invested and the customer might choose not to have the recommended repair performed.
Mechanics can’t hear the noise because they don’t want to get involved.
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Passenger side (right)… Don’t get mixed up and replace the wrong bearing and the bearing noise still be there, as long as it is confirmed a hub bearing noise…
Could also remove the axle from the hub and spin the hub to feel for any bearing roughness, if confirmed, the bearing is almost out and ready for replacement… If not, you are out less time than the complete hub replacement plus no parts involved… It is thinking outside the box and I have done it a few times…
When my Camry started making the typical wheel bearing noise, I was convinced it was the right side bearing because of the established reasoning. I was way too busy to do it myself so took it into a garage in a rare instance of paying someone else to do the work. They insisted on using chassis ears to diagnose the bearings before committing to any work. Lo and behold, they came back and said the LEFT side bearing was bad.
I questioned the diagnosis and they were quite adamant it was obvious from the chassis ears which one was bad. So I gave them the go ahead and turned out they were right. So I learned don’t be too quick to rely on the old reasoning! It may be correct most of the time but apparently, not always. 
I ran out and bought my own set of chassis ears immediately after that experience and have used them numerous times to diagnose noises on my vehicles and friend’s as well. They have paid for themselves many times over.
My chassis ears pick up conducted noise through the clips to the mics. They are completely unaffected by wind noise and I have never heard anything coming from the tires. The noise needs to be conducted through hard material to be picked up.
You can clearly hear bearings turning whether they are good or bad and other suspension noises. I have four mics and can switch between them while driving to compare. Bad wheel bearings stand out pretty clearly using them. Works great on accessory bearings and serpentine belt bearings to tell which one is the offending culprit.
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I agree, I have run across that as well, but rarely, and normally you can also feel the roughness in the spring in that case… I have found it is normally the inner row bearing that makes the noise when the bearing is not loose…
But I have also seen noise travel…
That’s interesting. Do you mean if the mechanic changes the wheel bearing hoping it will solve the noise problem. & it doesn’t, the mechanic isn’t allowed to collect the labor fee? Is this the shop rules? Seems a problematic situation for the customer & mechanic , b/c no mechanic will be willing to take the risk to replace the wheel bearing, so the customer still has the noise.
In this situation would the customer and mechanic be allowed by the shop rules to a written agreement that the customer pays the full fee even if the noise remains?
Diy’ers don’t have this dilemma, if I replace something and it doesn’t solve the problem I’m trying to solve, no one to argue about the fee with, so I just move on to the next idea.
When a technician needs to continue working on the same vehicle until it is repaired, he isn’t earning money working on the next vehicle. By the time the problem is resolved, all the remaining work in the shop might have been dispatched to other technicians.
If a customer returns complaining that the noise hasn’t changed, the service writer will send the job back to the same technician to be resolved, there is no diagnostic fee for “come backs”.
If the customer insists on a refund, the technician will probably be “back flagged” for the labor. Will he notice the -1.5 hours on the weekly report two weeks later?
It seems both the customer and the mechanic are between a rock and a hard place.