Noises @ the back…. Solved by Wife

[npjrogers]

Had a pesky hard to trace noise from my near side rear in my 96 Transit MH. wasn’t a wheel bearing, wasn’t the prop shaft, might be the diff, could be expensive. Showed up at slow speed and very slow speed. Sounded like something rubbing.. you could count the wheel revs as you crawled along. Seemed to disappear going around 30/40mph. Testing in an empty car park suggested that it went quiet during a 3-5 mph hard left turn but returned on rh turn and going straight. The MH is in pristine condition, just had an MOT all good. Looks well to, nice after market plastic hubcaps. Well you stay awake at night worrying about the cost of fixing it and whether at 77 you are too old for the heavy lifting to fix anything in the transmission..
I took my non technical but very intelligent wife to the car park to demonstrate the strange ‘quiet turning left’ phenomenon… then she said it… SOUNDS LIKE THE WHEEL IS LOOSE.. then said no more..nore did I.. the smart hubcaps we’re hiding the studs… right enough the wheel had two loose nuts and even at 77 it wasn’t a hard job to fix.
The motto is dont be lazy.. remove the wheel trim even if it is held tight with zip ties, I will be fitting the simple black hub caps that let you see the studs. Torqued up to 90ft/lbs.

[Altransit]

How annoying, and what's more annoying, it was the first thing I thought of as I started to read your post. It happened to me on my SWB Minibus years ago, in the pouring rain, and at night, my eldest son who was sitting in a seat over the NSR wheel reckoned he could feel it "kicking", and sure enough, when I stopped to investigate, that wheel was loose, and two of the studs had broken off. I had had new tyres fitted only weeks before, and had watched them tighten the nuts at the time, so I have no idea how it could have happened.
In my case, the wheel was scrap, and the studs and nuts were all damaged, but were replaced easily by me, so not too expensive