Wheel bearing(s)/hubs going bad?

edconline

So I'm hoping others may have had similar experiences and can shed some light on this.

Last season, I started noticing a metallic 'humming' sound, for lack of a better word, coming from somewhere on the car when moving. It seemed to get slightly louder the faster I was going, but I didn't notice it in the steering wheel at all. I had a couple alignments down last summer, no issues at all, and my new tires were mounted and balanced out perfectly.

All in all, the car was/is so loud anyways, it didn't bother me and didn't appear to affect anything.

Fast forward to this year, I've had the car out for about two weeks now, and the sound is again noticeable, but now seems quite a bit louder/more present. I wish I could take a video, but honestly there is no situation where you'd be able to hear it over the exhaust of the car through a video. The car has 55,000km on it, and the front hubs were replaced with new OEM ones (not because they were bad, because of a stud issue) at 37,589km.

I am running 305R/275F tires, really sticky, and have been for some time. Also, my wheel offset of +15R / +25F definitely has the tires out further than stock. Granted, they are much lighter than stock. So I suppose it stands to reason, that the added stress of the bigger, stickier tires and wheels which stick out further from the hub, could have caused premature failure of the bearings..

But has anyone else had this happen to them? I REALLY don't see how it could be the front, since the hubs have less than 20,000km on them since I replaced them.... maybe the rear?
Are the wheel bearings in this car that weak? And if that does turn out to be the issue, are there stronger aftermarket options yet, I don't think there were any options for the front hubs but OEM when I went to replace those.

Thanks!

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