Alright guys, my wife got off early so she run it to a local shop and they say they want us to drop it off one day a d let them compress the suspension?? Never heard of that. But they said either a wheel bearing or a strut bad. I’m no mechanic but it’s very faint, I’m not sure either of those would be right. But I’ll definitely pull the whee off tomorrow. Assuming I can source a socket for the locking lugs someone put on there with the after market wheels
it’s not in the Tahoe that I can find. So one more time I just need to jack it up and shake the wheel at different points and see if I can duplicate the rattle? If so assumption would be bearing?
Generally, when the wheel bearings go bad in these, the noise starts out as faint. But any noises from the bearings means it's bad an should be replaced ASAP and not wait until it gets louder. You don't need to remove the wheel to check them or the end links. In fact, you need the wheel in place to have grab points for leverage. You should locate and keep any special keys or sockets needed to remove the wheel BEFORE you're on the highway with a flat! In your checking, you may find that your noise is nothing more than loose lug nuts.
I'm NOT speaking for all shops, but I don't have much reason to trust any of them that I've had experience with. My most recent pertinent story is my dad in Florida who just got hosed for $1,700 (that he didn't have) and all I could do was sit back and watch it all happen. The shop that he trusts and has always gone to said he needed a $6,000 crate motor. I diagnosed a broken valve spring ($6 part) over the phone and said it'd take just minutes to pop off a valve cover to confirm. The shop originally told him they didn't know why he had no compression in one cylinder and listed off all the possibilities. When he called back to ask them to check the valve springs, THEN they said they "smelled coolant on the tip of the spark plug and the threads of the spark plug had an oily residue on it, so it's a blown head gasket". Oh, so now that he's asking questions they suddenly have a diagnosis?! They said since he's a loyal customer, they'd look under the valve cover for free (which took them three days, putting my dad further in the hole from his rental). He vanished for a few days then popped up out of nowhere, sending me a pic of the invoice and a broken valve spring. They charged him $50 for running the diagnostics (not disagreeing with the fee, but their diagnosis was wrong and reckless), $160 for the compression test (wouldn't that have been part of the diagnostics test for an engine brought in with a dead cylinder?), $62 for a valve cover gasket SET (they only opened up the one side that had the dead cylinder), and $70 for ONE valve spring. He needed brakes so they reamed him on the parts and labor for that as well. They knew he would just be happy that he didn't need a $6,000 motor for his truck that's worth maybe $2,000 at best and would pay the $1,700 with a smile.
Anyway, I apologize for the long-winded story but your post prompted a tangent. I'd be suspicious that a shop that finds loose lug nuts on a vehicle brought in by an uninformed person (especially if it's a woman) to be an easy sell for wheel bearings or more. It pays to do your own preliminary troubleshooting THEN tap in the pros once you've confirmed that it's something beyond your grasp. At least then you're not going to them half-cocked.
