Need diagnosis help

[90 Gen2]

Hi all.
I'm trying to verify that it is indeed a bad wheel bearing causing the noise in our car, or get other ideas of the problem.
Symptom: clunkclunkclunkclunk noise, all the time car is in motion, increases speed with wheel speed.
Noise does NOT change when alternating between accel and decel, but gets quieter when turning in one direction, louder when turning in the other.

What has been done so far:

new CV axle on the side opposite the noise, no change
new CV axle on the side the noise comes from, very little change if any
slightly loosened the wheel bearing on the side the noise comes from and drove - noise increased

I originally thought that the cv axle on the noisy side was bad and causing the noise, since there was a good deal of rotational play in the wheel when the one noisy side was jacked up. Brought it to a shop, they replaced the OTHER side since the boot was ripped on that side, claimed no more noise. Wrong, but the rotational play was at least a little less. Brought it back and had them replace the other side, the play was further lessened, but not eliminated. I thought it would be gone completely, am I wrong? Anyway, once the play was lessened, I could at least shake the wheel side to side to try to detect wheel bearing play. After I picked it up, I brought it home and jacked up that wheel and could detect bearing play. I figured it was just loose. Today I loosened the bearing locknut (it was very tight) and retightened it after I drove around with it intentionally loose for a while to help diagnose. I couldn't feel the play in the bearing this time, but maybe you have to have the wheel in the right position around the clock to feel the play?

Here's a link to a 1.5MB video of the amount of rotational play from one drive wheel to the other. I guess my only other idea was that the female splines in the transmission are worn, and no matter what I do there will now always be this noise and play unless I repair the transmission. I don't want to believe that, but I also don't want to pay for the wheel bearing replacement only to be again disappointed that this noise is still there!

http://rapidshare.de/files/2037394/huh.avi.html

Thanks for any help!

[terrastrife]

get a quote from a mechanic, a good place wont chage you excess, thats what i do ^^

[fredk]

sounds like a wheel bearing, get the wheel off the ground and grab it with both hands at 6;00 and 12;00 and see if it has any looseness, cv outer joints wont make any noise when going straight, they clatter on turns during accell, and the inner joint will make a clunk on decel from accell, or wobble-shake on accell

[90 Gen2]

fredk - thanks for replying, you too terradtrife.
I'll recheck at 6 n 12 for the clunk.
Before I felt it at 3 n 6, then today at 3 n 6 I didn't feel it.
pre cvs, there was a lot of clunk on transitions from accel to decel and back.
when I shake things around trying to replicate the noise, I find these things:

leaving the wheel bearing a tad loose, I can really easily recreate the noise grabbing at 3 n 6 and twisting side to side.

with the bearing a little loose, the outer shaft of the cv definitely moves around up and down, not only in and out, which makes the same noise I hear.

with the bearing a little loose, if I move the inner cv shaft inboard and outboard I can hear the same kind of noise.

the fact that both of those movements replicated the noise made me worry about cv to transmission interface, but to me the fact that the noise is the same in turns whether accelerating or coasting or engine braking ruled out cvs for me as being a factor, plus they're new, but what do I know?

Just couldn't think of any other possible cause besides wheel bearing, but then again the cv problems were masking the bearing problem before I got to this point, so I thought maybe someone else would have a "doomsday scenario" I could worry about before I got the bearing replaced....

thanks people, any other comments/ideas?

[90 Gen2]

I LOOSENED the bearing I thought was noisy, since I couldn't detect any play in EITHER front wheel bearing. The noise was the same but louder when I test drove it. Brought to our mechanic. The noise was so loud, he thought it was coming from the OTHER side, and replaced that wheel bearing first. When that didn't work, he gave us a "deal" on the second side, which we told him was the noisy one....sure enough that cured it good. Now, with good bearings and cv-axles, the car is much quieter and pleasant to drive than before, and that helps us justify continuing to improve and repair it on our quest to reach 300K miles.

Thanks for all who repsponded and offerred help, I hope someone can benefit from our experience later, if they find this by searching the forum...