Hi All,
For a couple of years, I've had a strange click-howling coming from the right front wheel at times. It's kind of sounded like the old baseball card in the spokes trick... and would happen on turns on when stopping, but only occasionally.
The general consensus was, if there were no signs of anything else rubbing, then it had to be the wheel bearing -- even though they only have 5k miles on them and tested out fine.
I ordered wheel bearings for all four corners, and pulled the hubs today to have the bearings changed. I found the likely culprit wasn't the bearing at all, but one of the spindle plate bolts was loose. Although hard to see in this photo, there is a slight wearing on the head of the bolt, and also on the heads of the hub-to-rotor bolts. My guess is that the loose bolt would occasionally make contact inside the hub, causing the loud noise, until the rotation of the wheel tightened the bolt up slightly, ending the noise.
IMG_1516.jpg
Thought I would post this up just in case anyone else ever runs across such an issue.
-Dave