Bad wheel bearing or tire?

It sounds to me like it could be a bend in the rim or the wheel bearing. You could jack up the front left of the car and run the engine to spin the wheel.

Here are a couple of links to two of my old posts where I describe how to check the wheel bearing, ball joints, and front suspension for loose and worn parts,

bearing is a good candidate, but is usually accompanied by a rumbling noise. jack the wheel off the ground and check for play.

For what it's worth, I'm on my second set of Turanza LS-Ts. Both sets have worked great for me and my last set lasted about 65-70K mi. Moreover, many other users of this tire that I know of have not had any problems. Though that doesn't exclude the possibility of one bad apple in the bunch, it just lowers the odds somewhat.

Eric

I would rotate the tires and see if the symptom changes. While you have it up, check the CV joints.

As it turns out, the guy at the tire shop where I purchased the tires a few weeks ago obviously didn't get the lug nuts tight enough on the left front wheel and they had all four worked themselves extremely loose. You couldn't tell it by just looking at it. But when you jacked the car up and grabbed the top and bottom of the tire it was immediately obvious what was causing the previously described problem. I would have never dreamed that this particular tire shop would have done this to my wheel. :-(

Needless to say that this particular mistake of theirs could have ended up costing me my life. Or at least screwed up my car in a major kind of way. The lesson learned here is that I am now going to invest in my own torque wrench and go behind these people whenever I have a new set of tires put on, or have them rotated, etc. This is pretty sad to me...

Ron M.

As it turns out, the guy at the tire shop where I purchased the tires a few weeks ago obviously didn't get the lug nuts tight enough on the left front wheel and they had all four worked themselves extremely loose. You couldn't tell it by just looking at it. But when you jacked the car up and grabbed the top and bottom of the tire it was immediately obvious what was causing the previously described problem. I would have never dreamed that this particular tire shop would have done this to my wheel. :-(

Needless to say that this particular mistake of theirs could have ended up costing me my life. Or at least screwed up my car in a major kind of way. The lesson learned here is that I am now going to invest in my own torque wrench and go behind these people whenever I have a new set of tires put on, or have them rotated, etc. This is pretty sad to me...

Ron M.

I had that happen once. Take a close look at each lug nut seat on the wheel to ensure the wheel isn't cracking. I had to replace the wheel and all the lugs.

Mike