E 90 bmw 316, 07 whining sound

 

I've got an iffy front nearside wheel bearing on my E60, first noticed when I had the hub stipped down to change the brakes (hub felt gritty and not as smooth to turn as the offside hub).  I can only hear a very slight change in rumble sound (over ordinary tyre/engine noise) when cornering.  On a right hand bend when the nearside wheel loads up the noise gets slightly louder, when cornering to the left when the nearside unloads the rumble gets less.  Mine has got 73,000 on it but that was the side that I impacted a serious pothole on and wrote off the alloy and tyre so I don't think that will have done the bearing any good but that was over 20,000 miles ago.

 

Drive it lively into the bends and see if you notice a difference in noise as each front wheel loads and unloads, if so then my money would be on a wheel bearing.

 

Or jack up each wheel in turn and grasp the wheel at 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock and try and rock it for movement.  Then repeat grasping at 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock.  I get no movement in my bearing doing this though!  But I've felt it wrong and BMW picked it up at a recent service.

 

A drive train bearing will be constant noise underload and shouldn't be affected by cornering.  My mum had an Vaux Carlton that had worn diff bearings which whined between 30mph and 70 mph.  Quite noisy and was refurbed by dealer under warranty.  Noise went.