I was testing out my wheel bearings today by rotating the wheel with one wheel in the air and noticed I can rotate the wheel (not the steering wheel) a good 2 inches freely before encountering resistance from the tranny and such. Is this normal?

 

that doesnt test wheel bearing.

to test the wheel bearing you should try to move the wheel left to right(as in
steering) to check play. If the bearing is going bad you should be able to
see a noticeable play from the brake disc/wheel vs the caliper/spindle.

It sounds like you are checking play within the differential between the two axles.

 

If hes spinning the wheel to listen for a grinding noise then, yes, hes also testing out the wheel bearings.

 

Yeah I was checking for the wheel bearings because I was told to check it that way. I just happeend to notice the differential play when I was testing it out. So is it normal to have that much differential play?