Mazda3 Whooping Noises?

[CSVT#49]

Hey guys hopefully someone can shed some light on this...

So my wife and I just took our 09 Mazda3 on a long road trip. On the way back it rained the entire time. Not sure that this has anything to do with it, but I'm throwing everything out there. Then the following day I noticed a whooping noise resonating in the cabin that appeared to be coming from the passenger front wheel area. It only was present when the car was moving and was more noticeable at low speeds (probably because of the road noise). Today I jacked up the front of the car and spun the wheels freely with the trans in neutral. Driver side sounded fine, but the passenger side definitely had the noise I was hearing in the car.

I took the passenger wheel off and spun the hub. I can't really pin point where the noise is coming from but it's definitely not at the wheel. I suspect that it's coming from the intermediate shaft support bearing. I tried spraying some silicone lubricant and then some lithium grease around the CV connection thinking maybe some crap got lodged in there and/or rust was building up and causing rubbing. In either case this didn't help. I really don't want to tear into the thing and start replacing parts, since I will definitely have to drain the trans and tear a ton of stuff apart to replace the intermediate shaft (since I'm willing to bet they only service the bearing with the entire shaft assembly).

So my hope is that someone here has had this similar problem or has a better idea as to what this noise could be. I've linked the video I recorded and uploaded to youtube that has a decent recording of the noise I'm talking about. Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[CSVT#49]

Well I splurged for the intermediate shaft, Mazda P/N GG5125700G. I'll keep everyone posted as to how this turns out.

 

[CSVT#49]

Well the intermediate shaft was definitely the culprit. Disassembled everything this afternoon and after taking it out, spinning the bearing, the noise was exactly what was resonating through the cabin.

Didn't get everything assembled today because I need a new clip ring for the end of the intermediate shaft. Ended up damaging the boot on the passenger side CV trying to put it on too. This sucked as the boot is almost impossible to find with the only place having a listing was Napa and it came with a 1 week wait time. So I ended up buying a new CV shaft too, ugh. In anycase should be up and running again tomorrow afternoon.

Here is a video of the old part, excuse the plastic crumpling at the beginning. If you skip to the 10sec mark you can avoid it. You'll have to turn up the volume a little bit to hear the whooping/whirling noise as the bearing spins. The new part did not do this at all.