How to tell if wheel bearing or ball joint is bad?, Updated! Options

[GriffGirl]

There are bad, evil, rubbing/grinding noises (sounds dirty heh heh) coming from my rear passenger wheel. Actually it sounds like the backing plate is rubbing against the rotor, but I'm pretty certain that's not what's going on. The sound is definitely related to the rotation of the wheel; it's louder when I go slower too although that could just be because there's less road noise to drown out the sound. The noise sounds not unlike when brake pads are completely worn and it's metal on metal - it's that grinding noise, not a squealing or high pitched noise at all. It's really loud from the driver's side though, I can only imagine what it sounds like outside the car!

I'm leaning toward bad wheel bearing but I wanted to check with you guys first to get some tips and ideas before I go buying the wrong part.

This post has been edited by GriffGirl: Feb 2, 2009 - 12:11 PM

[trdproven]

If worse case scenario you have to drill which I recommend over grinding because grinding cuts a piece of the bar sometimes, all you have to do is drill on the nut till you can pop it off or break it off. Your new endlinks come with new nuts anyways. For me that was the faster way. Ive tried grinding (hell) as compared to drilling off just the nut and it worked much faster.

griff - are you trying to install the TRD springs I sold you?

This post has been edited by trdproven: Feb 1, 2009 - 11:49 AM