CV Joint Failure?

ever replace the wheel bearings?

I don't think so.

Debris between brake rotor and splash shield? Directionality of sounds is not very reliable, so check both sides.

I would have the tires and alignment checked by a tire shop. Take one of their guys for a ride and see what they say. Could be a bad tire. I thought I had a wheel bearing going out and it turned out to be a cupped tire because the alignment was off. The faster I went the louder the noise was. The bad tire was also on the right rear and it was waaaaay out of alignment.

that's sounds more like a chainsaw, faster you go faster the lumberjacks run trough the woods :D

had one during shortcut_trough_woods_rally_type going home trips...

I would guess that the type of debris would / could make a big difference in the sound produced.

Chris

true :)

I had a small stone.

Since the car has an "open" rear end instead of a limited slip, it's possible to jack the side up and block the wheels on the other side, then use a rod or stethoscope to find the noise source. (Engine running, car in gear etc. requires careful attention to safety.) I once had to do this on an Mazda MPV. Turned out that the passenger side rear wheel bearing had a cracked/broken plastic spacer between the ball bearings. It was easier to fix than find.

Based on the first statement alone I would suspect it probably is not the wheel bearings. Normally when those start to go they get louder when you apply lateral load.

Chris

i think that noise change (increased or decreased) upon lateral movement is more apparent if the issue is in the front not the rear. i chased down a problem that everyone said was cv joints but still had the noise after both axles were replaced... obviously the op has some work to do to corectly identify his/her problem.

What good is that gonna do if it's a tire as I suggested?

There is also no way in hell *I* would do that!

is this what he is sugesting?

In the "old days" you dynamically balanced tires on the car. Hunter made a machine that spun up unpowered wheels, and you used the power train to spin powered wheels. A disk assembly with center adjustment knobs was mounted/clamped to the wheel. Windows on the disk assembly showed where and how much weight to add. There were problems with this method when disk brakes first came into common use. Seems that the disk brakes put a small load on the spinning wheel, and the Hunter units did not have enough power, eventually leading to a burnt out Hunter unit motor.

You can use the method with a limited slip axle if you have both driven wheels off the ground and the car properly restrained. It's necessary to have additional to ground clearance, since the tires expand with the spin speed. The open axle allows the single wheel to spin at "double speed", thus 30mph on the speedo (if it reads at all) is a 60mph spin speed on the wheel.

I did use this method to isolate the problem to the right rear. It worked fine, the problem side was obvious. I didn't do it in a garage though. Now I'm working on the Spindle nut !@#$%! Ephar & Bambi '92 A