I bought my 95 Civic EX about a month ago and it was in dire need of tires. It had a lot of road noise coming from the front passenger side and I assumed it was related to how unevenly worn down the tires were. The car also pulled to the left quite a bit which also led me to believe it may have not gotten the alignment that the previous owner said he had done. However, once I replaced the tires, the car drives perfectly straight with no pull to either side on level ground at 60mph. Unfortunately, the road noise is still there and is as loud as ever. It pretty much goes away completely when making a right hand turn around corners at moderate speeds (35+ mph) but has no change when making the same speed turn to the left.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO-xvXwXcxc

I made right hand turns at the 9 and 15 second marks. It's a little easier to hear the change at the 15 second mark.

The road noise when cruising at 60 mph on the freeway is maddening and I'd like to remedy this. Any ideas? Should I consider getting another alignment done even if the car drives perfectly straight now? I'd just worry about it being a complete waste of money if in fact the previous owner did just get it aligned.

 

Bump. After doing some searching, I'm thinking I may have a bad wheel bearing. Tomorrow I'll pull the wheel off and pull on the hub to see if there's any play, but if that's the case, would my best bet be just pulling off a used knuckle from a junkyard? Originally I was going to go ahead and just get a brand new bearing put in, but after searching through a lot of old threads it seems like many people ended up swapping in an entire knuckle assembly from a junkyard instead of paying a shop to press the bearings.

 

So I checked the play in the wheel. There's no play whatsoever when I pull on it at 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock. There's the tiniest bit of play at 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock. What alarms me the most is that the front tires are already down to the wear marks on the outermost edge, and it's only been 1000 miles since they were changed.

So essentially here's what I've got: a car that drives straight down the road but extreme wear on the outside edge of both front tires. A howling noise coming from only the front passenger side that increases with speed and goes away with sharp turns to the right. A passenger side wheel that has no play at 6 o'clock and 12 o'clock but slight play at 3 and 9, (which would be tie rod ends correct?) but no shaking or play in the steering wheel.

I'm not sure what I should do. Should I replace the wheel bearing, the tie rods, both?

 

Bent components or EXTREMELY worn suspension bushings.

Only thing I can think of if you have had a recent alignment.

 

Wheel bearings can fail without "play." They can make noise and no play. Some places check alignment and do not charge if everything is ok. Especially true of the place that also sell tires. The place that aligned my tires drove it post alignment and heard the noise of bad bearings. Post alignment specs please.