I have a 04 F250 4x4. This growling noise has been driving me nuts. Its barely audible, but its there. Brought it to the dealer for service a few weeks ago, they said I had a bad front hub bearing. So I got the truck back, ordered a hub bearing, and last weekend jacked the truck up to see whats going on. Spun both front wheels, no noise whatsoever. Checked for up/down play and side/side play, nothing. So I held off on installing the hub bearing.

The noise is really more noticeable when going down the road and when you hit dips in the road. Kinda where the bounce puts more force/weight on the front end, the growling gets louder. The truck has 74k miles on it. Its there whether the hubs are locked or unlocked.

Could i still have a bad hub bearing even though the wheel spins free and quiet, and no play???

 

only way to know for sure is to change it out. without weight the groan would be considerably less than the weight of the front end on the bearing.

 

kinda sounds like what happened to me when my passenger side hub assembly went south. I would change them out too.

 

When my bearings were going out, they would make more noise when in 4WD. It was a definate giveaway.

 

I think its a wheel bearing also. Both mine went bad within 6 months of each other, but because of the tires I run, its extremely hard to detect a bad bearing....until they're TOAST!

While driving, the side with the bad bearing will sound off more when the weight is on that side. In other words, if the drivers side bearing is bad, it'll sound off more on a right curve when most of the weight is on the bad bearing.

BTW, a bad bearing may not have any loose play or even feel bad just turning the wheel by hand. Run it up to speed and/or put weight on it and it comes alive.

I just used this method to diagnose a bad bearing on my wifes '06 Explorer. Nobody else in the family even detected a problem until I pointed it out.

 

"While driving, the side with the bad bearing will sound off more when the weight is on that side. In other words, if the drivers side bearing is bad, it'll sound off more on a right curve when most of the weight is on the bad bearing."

This is exactly what I thought was happening on the right side. Groaning noise, louder at speed and curves to the left. you can even her it pulling the wheel back and forth while driving. So I replaced the right front wheel hub assembly and it's still there!!! My only other thought would be a CV joint, but I'm about ready to drop it off at the shop.

Is there anything else in there that could cause this?

 

replace your power steering fliud a few times (replace, drive, replace, drive, etc). my truck had a mild growl that when away after flushing the power steering fluid and putting the correct fluid in.

 

It probably is you hub and like was said, change them in pairs, check your upper and lower ball joints while you're that far into it.

Did you check your ujoints all the way around they can cause the growling noise also, you may also hear a clunk or a pop when you stop and start.

When was the last time you changed the fluid on the front diff? Were there any shavings in it?

 

"While driving, the side with the bad bearing will sound off more when the weight is on that side. In other words, if the drivers side bearing is bad, it'll sound off more on a right curve when most of the weight is on the bad bearing."

Turns out this part is not always true with the new hub assemblies. Although the sound increased on sweeping turns to the left, it turns out the growling noise was in fact coming from the left front hub assembly. New hub assemblies all the way around. No more noise.

 

I recently had a similar noise with by 2003, F-350 with 350,000 miles. It sounded like a bad front wheel bearing and the sound seemed to be coming from the front drivers side. Due to the high mileage, I replace the outer and inner bearings on both sides, but the sound was still there and gradually got louder over the days that I continued to drive it. I finally found and fixed the noise. It was a bad carrier bearing (driveshaft support bearing). The noise was transferring down the driveshaft to other connected metal where the source of the noise became deceptive.

I searched the internet for answers to similar problems and it frustrates me that so many beginning posts do not provide how they finally resolved their issue. So this is my attempt to provide a valued solution to a rather common groaning noise. Hope this helps someone else.