04 Cooper S with ~37,000 miles. Since summer I have been experiencing a noise in the front end - passenger side that gets louder as the speed increases. It also has been getting louder as time goes by. The dealer indicated that I needed to get new tires. Being close to winter I had my snow tires put on about 4 weeks ago and there was no change in the noise. Had the snow tires checked for balance and rotated from front to back and that did not change the noise level at all. And when I say noise I mean that I cannot hear myself think on the highway, it is that loud. I don't take anyone as a passenger because the noise is so annoying.

I have seen noise on other threads but not quite the same as this. Any help would be appreciated.

 

If its a howling noise that doesn't change with engine RPMs (shifting gears) yet increases with speed & is getting louder over time. Sounds like a wheel bearing to me.

 

Howling sound is right on the money. When I had it at the dealer in early November they did a front end alignment, wouldn't they have picked up on the wheel bearing? I'll call them this week to check it out. Thanks

 

They would only notice it while doing an allignment if it was wobbly loose as opposed to some of the individual ***** within the bearing crapping out.

 

Read my post on Front Wheel Noise as mine started out as a tire sound on the road as I increased speed, it then turned into scraping noise.

You can see what the dealer had to do to fix my problem.

 

Turned out to be rear wheel noise and dealer replaced wheel bearing, problem solved.