Good evening y’all,

So as my title says, about two days ago, (the last time I drove the car) my máxima started to have a clunking/popping noise around my rear drivers side tire almost every time my wheel did a “complete spin.” Whether I was going 10 mph, 30
mph or any speed for that matter, it kept popping off. At first it was quiet, but then gradually got louder and louder as I was going home to the point where it was vibrating my whole car. This was a span of about 40 minutes until I couldn’t even go past 40 mph on the highway. Initially, I thought I had a flat. I pulled over and saw that my tire was okay, full at 32 psi. Still I kept inspecting and saw the tire had a “ball” shaped bump. I proceeded to remove it and put on the spare thinking my tire was going to give out anyways . But yet with the spare, my vehicle kept doing the same noise. Clueless otw home, I was trying to think of other problems. One thing I did notice is while trying to turn sharp turns, my steering wheel would almost turn by itself various ways almost every other turn. When I arrived home, I jacked my car up to check everything out. I did the “pulling tire test” for the tide rod and wheel bearing but my tire remained stiff with no movement. Everything else seemed in place. Even after getting a new tire, I didn’t even have to pull out of my driveway or even go faster than 10 mph to hear the clunking/popping noise. I know this is a long post, but I wanted to provide all the info I could for all the experts out there. Any help with be taken with gratitude. Thanks again I’m advance y’all.

 

Sure sounds like a wheel bearing to me. Of course it is possible a bent component or a sisconnected sway bar but the symptoms are very much a very bad wheel bearing

 

I agree with LtLeary on the wheel bearing. It sounds like it might have been a sudden "catastrophic" failure as opposed to a gradual failure. On my previous max, I never had play in the wheel, but the bearing was bad.

Fortunately, on this car, the rear bearings are pretty easy to replace, compared to what they were on my '95. I bought my locally from Napa and had them order in several hubs until I got 2 that were made in the USA. There was a very distinct difference in the offshore vs USA made on the same brand, same part number.