Can a bad tire cause a sound similar to bad bearing noise?

[vancouverbc]

My wheel was making a noise that sounded like bad bearing. Mechanic listened to it with stethoscope and reported that the inside of tire is coming apart. I'm replacing my tires anyways but was quite surprised that a bad tire could cause such a noise.

[Nismo_Freak]

Yeah tires can cause a similar noise. Typically it's due to tread designs causing vibrations, which are heard as a sound. Typically high pitched as a sing, but deformations of the tire are heard as lower frequency noise, which mimicks a wheel bearing's roar.

[vancouverbc]

thanks. i will have to take a pic of tire.

[vancouverbc]

replaced tires and noise is still there.

[SmithSR]

Have your man check bearings again. Check them yourself too.A bad bearing is usually quite easy to diagnose.Shift the vehicle load when driving aka, swerve a little bit. Does the noise lessen or increase when swerving from side to side.(loading and unloading each side bearing is what you're trying to accomplish here)

[chandler]

my tires have a little noise but I know its the tires, ( I work with tires all day), and its the tread design, it sticks like heck but a little noisy

[SmithSR]

What tires do you use?

[RobertsnewQ]

I've seen that - I had an old Corolla that I swore had a bad wheel bearing. I replaced each front bearing and nothing changed. Then I convinced myself it was the left rear. So I changed that bearing and nothing changed... I drove it like that for another 20,000 miles . Right before I sold it I replaced the left rear tire with the spare and suddenly the noise went away......

Goes to show that diagnosis is not as easy as it seems.

[vancouverbc]

ridiculously, it was the brakes. i told mechanic that the noise was coming from passenger side so i guess that is all they checked because the brakes on driver side rear were really warn down and very uneven when i checked recently. the noise has been evident for at least a year and i had checked brakes before and the pads did seem ok at that time.