What are the warning signs of a bad front bearing?

Noise generally sometimes you can pick up the offending wheel and spin it slowly and jog it back and forth and hear some scraping or spinning noises that are noisy when they should be pretty much dead quiet The TRQ bearings I get off eBay or inexpensive and usually when I get a new car that has above 200,000 mi no records in the glove box of the never being changed I have a loaded set of hubs sitting right here in the carport with lower ball joints new bearings sometimes sway bar end links at the ready takes 45 minutes aside to pop that stuff on with basic tools you can buy at Walmart and then I do the other side and then the next day or whenever I might do the rears I'm getting ready to lift the rear of a Prius I have 30 mm leave the front at stock height and put 205 60 15 tires all the way around it.

 

noise that resonates into the cabin, usually starts to get louder from 30-40mph. Note that on the prius some wheel bearing issues don't show up as looseness when shaking the front wheel. It usually changes pitch when swerving left and right.

here's a sample of what it sounds like.

 

I also had a wheel bearing that failed without making the usual bearing failure noise.

First symptom, unusual tire wear (cupping). This didn't have much of an impact until we rotated tires, which confused the issue (we not only rotated tires, but rotated summer/winter tires - and tires between my and my wife's cars).

We finally diagnosed the problem (and which car) by jacking the front of the car up (during an oil change), wiggling the wheels side to side (also an indication of tie rod failure) as well as up and down (also an indication of ball joint failure). When we finally got to the wheel it wiggled both side to side as well as up and down (but when looking to see where the wear was coming from, it wasn't the tie rods or ball joints.)

I had also sometimes felt a slight wobble in the steering wheel when accelerating in a tight turn as well. I didn't think that much of it, and thought if anything it might have been a CV axle.

We've made the "wheel wiggle" part of our standard oil change procedure (along with the air filter and other fluids check).

 

I had one recently. Drivers side only. Made a very distinct wheel bearing noise. The noise sped up as the cars speed increased.