I recently finished a 2,400mi trip and ended up getting a front end vibration throughout the trip which I feel is coming from the driver's side. I haven't yet managed to get it to occur consistently so it's a wash to bring it to my mechanic to reproduce it but I'm weary on taking the car on a long trip with this issue.

It happens at highway speeds 50mph and up where the steering wheel slowly starts to shake and get worse to the point where the vibration transfers itself to the rest of the car. Some times, if I slow down enough, the shake will mostly rid of itself. Other times it'll shake for a while but will disappear completely - so it comes and goes. There's a low hum driveline noise, almost bearing/cv joint-like when there's throttle. If I let off the throttle, it's 50/50 of the noise going away. If it doesn't, the noise will mostly go away with slight throttle input.

I had 2 shops check it out during the trip, neither found anything wrong and said that everything was tight and blamed the tires. I've already swapped out to my winters and the vibration is back today after doing a few highway trips with no discernible shaking.

Calipers and mounts are tight, front end is new (control arms, endlinks, inner/outer tie rods, bushings, alignment, etc). I've been doing a lot of city driving so the symptoms don't come up.

As the car has 215k miles I get the sense it's the driver's side CV joint and/or the wheel bearing. Wheel bearings are original as far as I know. I had the axles re-greased and re-booted on both sides last year, but I replaced the passenger side one with a lower mileage OE, driver's side is original so lots of miles. I am lowered.

Am I on the right track or could it be something else?

 

wheel weights didn't fall off did they?

 

Not a wheel balance issue. It did it with my all seasons on AE wheels. It's doing it now on my 16" winters. Swapped them front to back too.