Good luck and keep everyone up to date. A saturday afternoon is a good day to spend getting to know your vehicle. We all started out not knowing what to do, but in the end you'll figure it out and save hundreds of dollars doing it yourself.

 

So, like I said I took the tire off yesterday and found nothing. Today got in the car and drove my son to school and the noise seemed to be a bit worse. Is it possible that I did something to aggravate it when I took off the tire? The noise is still there if I put the cr in neutral and coast. I also found that it is difficult to hear the rattle inside the car with the windows closed. It is noticeable but hard to hear. With the windows open driving past objects that reflect the sound back into the open window, it is very noticeable. It also turns into a whine at times. I am not too worried as the mechanics had the car up on the lift to repair the noise and all the came back with are ball joints, I am assuming they did a once-over on the car and found nothing major, as they would have repaired it and certainly charged me for it. The brake pads seemed good, but could it be the brakes? Is it possible for the brake caliper to be rubbing against the inside of the tire rim? I thing I am going to duck-tape a small video camera under the hood and drive for a bit and see what I can come up with, lol.

 

I'm leaning towards a worn CV joint as well. Because you mentioned it gets worse with 4WD I'm 99% sure it's a drivetrain problem. Check your u joints on the front drivehaft too. I would put your differential on the bottom of the list of things to checks because that will be more of a hum too, unless the bearings for the shafts are bad.

Just crawl under there and start turning tugging and pulling on things to find something loose. If you're 100% sure your truck has AWD (4WD FT) then you can put the front end up on jack stands, spin the tires at about 20MPH and have someone walk around and pinpoint where the noise is coming from exactly, but again be VERY VERY careful when you do that. Ha I should talk, we used to do 0-128 in 3 seconds lifting the back of my D up and flooring it, you could just see it racking up the miles like crazy too, we just get bored around here and stuff like that happens all the time, what can i say haha.

But anyways first thing would just be just a matter of getting under there and checking for anything loose.

 

I had a bad wheel bearing and it was only noticeable when the sound could reflect off objects I drive past too. But that was more of a scraping metal on metal sound.

 

Never assume that. Sometimes they will, but quite often if they're booked up they'll just do the bare minimum they can get away with so they can move on to the next vehicle in line.

Mechanics, even the good ones, are human just like the rest of us. Sometimes when they get really busy, they just want to get items crossed off the to-do list as fast as they can.

 

Man I had a worn out wheel bearing and that mother f'er was the only thing I could hear until I replaced it. People thought something was wrong with my phone because people couldn't understand me on my cell phone it was so loud.

That is by far the most annoying thing that went wrong on my truck in the 12 years I've had it. Knock on wood but not many things have gone wrong with it.

 

I caught mine going bad really early, it still looks good but there was a faint metal on metal scraping sound that went away after I replaced the hub assembly. Now on my friend's ford escort they had a wheel bearing go back and got a loud low grumbling noise as well as some vibrations so I'm guessing they waited a really long time on theirs.

 

When the wheel bearing went out of my 98 it happened unusually fast. From the first sign of unusual noise to completely undriveable took about a mile and a half of 35mph in-town driving.

When the needle bearings fall out it throws the entire wheel off-center. This produces a MAJOR grinding sound as the edge of the brake caliper digs into the inside of the wheel. That wheel is now a big challenge for the tire shops to get balanced.....

 

I think when your bearings fall out, it would go pretty fast too haha. Mine was slow because some dirt got inside the seal and it started tearing up the inside of it.

 

LMFAO! Yeah, it turns out they're somewhat important....