Since it is a slow weekend here....

[Gene Pink]

...I finally found that "Highway Whine" that no one else in the truck could ever hear but me. Maybe you just get used to how your vehicle sounds, but that ~400hz /70MPH song wasn't there before, it is new. And new noises from mechanical devices are generally not a good thing. Something changed, and things don't change for the better.

Prompted by an obnoxious screeching wear indicator (damn they design them loud, pull up to a light, bats change direction and run into walls, people from the next county turn and look, and th neighborhood dogs start howling in answer to a question that my truck brakes didn't ask) 

I pulled the front brakes off, and the right spindle felt, um, notchy as I turned it. Unsmooth. An A-HA moment.

So here's another off-topic non-electrical/electronic jpeg, the outer race of the offending bearing.

Gene

 

[JohnRoberts]

That looks rough where it should be smooth... 
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I don't have pictures but a few years ago I rebuilt my beater brush vacuum cleaner. The rotating brush was supported by a plastic bushing and the race was trashed from wear and tear.  Plastic on plastic bearing surface ??

I was pleasantly surprised that I could buy new factory repair parts, while the price was less pleasant, but still a ton cheaper than buying a new vacuum, and once repaired it works as good as new.

JR 

 

[PRR]

That will buff out.

 

[okgb]

It's disappointing but not surprising how many things create noise these days
[ cheaper not to bother with it ]  I know your's is a case of repair, bravo!
I had a wheel bearing that made a nice hum that increased with speed, swerving side to side
made it come and go, revealing it was the wheel and not the transmission as I feared
[ as it shifted the rpm's dropped and the hum decreased ]

 

[JohnRoberts]

It's disappointing but not surprising how many things create noise these days
[ cheaper not to bother with it ]  I know your's is a case of repair, bravo!
I had a wheel bearing that made a nice hum that increased with speed, swerving side to side
made it come and go, revealing it was the wheel and not the transmission as I feared
[ as it shifted the rpm's dropped and the hum decreased ]

I would consider a wheel bearing serious enough to repair.

I was driving a jeep on the autobahn in Germany (at speed) leading a 3 truck convoy (Reforger II NATO maneuvers) when one of my wheel bearings seized up... the jeep immediately shifted over one lane before freeing up again.  I may have been going too fast for the poorly serviced jeep (it had been sitting all year since the last nato maneuvers). The trucks I was leading were faster than my jeep so they were bugging me to go faster.  ;D  We ended up backing one of the trucks up to a roadside bank, and I drove my  (1/4T) jeep up into the bed of the 5T truck.  I led the convoy the rest of the way in from the back of the truck.  (I invented "Leading from behind").  8) I had the radio and the captain (I was the driver for), so we were technically still leading them, but I didn't have to steer the rest of the way in. 

As i recall we made even better time coming in from there, and I dropped of the broken jeep at the motor pool to swapped it for one with functional wheel bearings.

JR