Does the sound happen while making a turn? Usually turning left will put pressure on the wheel bearing that is on the right side and vicesa versa. Before deciding on changing the wheel bearing, jack up the wheel and spin it to see if where the noise is coming from. Put hands at 12 and 6 and push pull. Looking for any play. Then hands at 9 and 3. Doing the same. Noise could be coming from the brakes??

Personally had to replace my front right wheel bearing on my 2007 CRV LX AWD. Was thinking to replace both sides until I actually did the work for the faulty side. Decided if it ain't broke then not going to replace it. I did buy the replacement part and it sits in my basement. That was three years ago and there has been no problem since.

Note: If you haven't done any work on the car or wheels before then there might be a build up of rust. Depending upon where you live. Rust belt??? Lots of road salt??

 

The pro way to isolate the fault is to put the car on a jack and run the engine and drive train, wheels spinning, in the air. A mechanic's stethoscope can be used to probe each hub. If a bearing is bad, it will show up pretty dramatically this way.

 

If it were mine and one was failing, I would be looking to replace all of them. Have a buddy who just went through this. Was on a road trip and over 1K miles from home and had one wheel bearing fail. Cost him $1800 to have it fixed. And then had to buy a plane ticket back home and then one to go back and get it. Every car may be different as to what happens when one fails. His screwed up a lot of stuff.

 

The general rule of thumb is to replace both sides at the same time. My PERSONAL practice is to replace only when/what's needed - but I DIY, so the calculation of the necessity is different from if you have to have a shop do it.

My PERSONAL experience, after doing 10+ wheel bearings over the years on various family vehicles is they tend to NOT fail in conjunction with each other.

Conventional wisdom on why both should be replaced is based on the idea that if one is "old enough" to need replacement, the other, being the same age, will soon follow.

What I have PERSONALLY found is the vast majority of times, one will fail, but the other either lasts MANY thousands (even 10s of thousands) of miles longer, and/or never need replacement before EOL of the car. I say "vast majority" simply because although I cannot recall a single instance of tandem failure, it MAY have happened once.

Although there are cases of catastrophic bearing failure (where the car isn't driveable), I have never personally experienced it myself, and the vast majority of times, the car remains driveable for many hundreds, if not thousands of miles - it just gets noisier over time. Before I got myself a Steelman Chassis Ear, I would frequently let the noise progress until I could definitively tell which bearing was bad.

I would also caution about the left turn/right turn method of determining which bearing is bad. My PERSONAL experience is that modern sealed bearings do not necessarily follow the wisdom. In fact there was only one, maybe two times where the "method" proved correct in determining which side was bad (which is why I eventually got the Chassis Ear). Even then, I would try to guess which side based on noise, but the Chassis Ear would end up showing it to NOT be the case. The Chassis Ear has been 100% percent correct in determining which bearing.

 

I had hard times locating faulty bearings too. Will try Chassis Ear next time - good to know there is such a tool.

 

I believe that when the bearing starts to go bad then there would be a temperature difference between the failing bearing and the others on the car. The failing bearing being hotter than the rest. But, that is only my belief.

 

I got mine used off FleaBay (because I'm a tight@ss). Got the wireless one because it's what came up, and I liked the idea of wireless, but some have complained about signal quality, though I haven't had the problem myself - just something to be aware of if choosing between the two.

Also, I recommend having a second person doing the switching, as it can be a little awkward switching between the sensors and driving at the same time, and always hookup ALL 4 CORNERS. There have been times when it sounded like the front or back, only to be the other way around (because the vibration carries through the body/frame.

 

I don't know where you are or if you plan to DIY, but since the 2015 uses a hub ASSEMBLY, it's pretty straight forward - ie. no press needed since the bearing is captured. If you DIY AND plan to just replace the bearing, you need a way of pressing the hub out, then bearing, then reverse.

If you live in a rust state like me (NH), you might run into a hub assembly that is rust seized into knuckle, which will require more "finesse." If that's the case, usually the bearing base takes quite a beating when trying to get it out of the knuckle, so plan on replacing the assembly. A lot of people just replace the whole assembly because then you get a nice, new, shiny hub and base.