Wheel bearings or tire noise?

[DMILLA33]

Alright so a month ago I put on my Vogtland gt3 coilovers and have been taking my time getting an alignment cause I have new wheels and tires to put on and I don't car about the shitty ones on the car. Anyways.... The edges of the dws tires that are on the car now are getting extremely worn and I'm getting what sounds like a worn tire noise around 25-35 mphish and higher around 65-75 mph. I know thats also symptoms of a bad wheel bearing. I suspect a bad right rear wheel bearing because when I swerve the the right the noise goes away and when I swerve to the left the noise stays. I jacked up the car and I hear nothing but a little bit of brake drag when I spin the wheels. Could this be just cause of a worn tire or is this for sure a rear wheel bearing?

Btw, putting tires and wheels on my car saturday to test it out and getting my car aligned and corner balanced on tuesday but it would be nice to have an idea ahead of time...

Also, If this is a wheel bearing.. Should I cancel my alignment and corner balancing until the wheel bearing is replaced? Would replacing the wheel bearing replacement throw off the alignment again?

Thanks!

[DMILLA33]

Oops meant to post in b5 s4.. my bad.

[JayTeeC]

FWIW - tire noise is more common than bearing noise. VERY hard to tell them apart tho. If you're planning on getting tires already, I'd do that first and see if noise continues before worrying about bearings. For the second question - (not positive, but..) i dont think a bearing job will affect alignment. You can ask the tire shop that question, and they can also check the bearings while its up on the lift. My money (well, yours) is on the tires. Good luck!

[DeeMeas507]

Yeah it's a wheel bearing. I had the same exact issues, I thought it was a bad axle. I ended up just changing hub assembly because I didn't want to get the bearing pressed in. I got the hub off ebay for 40 bucks. Cheap fix

[cdsvt]

Odds are, it will require an alignment.

At least when I did mine on a former b5 s4 I had to take the upright off to press out and press in the bearing/hub. I ended up replacing lots of parts which necessitated an alignment.

I also just changed out the rear wheel bearings on my b6 (last weekend) and since I marked the parts (the eccentric adjuster) I was able to do it without requiring realignment. The b6 uses a bolt in bearing assembly which makes this easier.

I suppose if you did it with a hub shark type tool you might get lucky and avoid that hassle. I didn't have a hub shark, so I did it the hard way.