excessive road noise

[blkmonday]

i have a 98 blazer with 130k im experiencing excessive road noise and a little vibration at high speeds. ive recently changed the rear u-joints but this was a problem before that as well. the alignment seems to be fine and the tread wear on the fairly new tires seem to be ok..it almost sounds like loud tires (lemans a/t with proper tire pressure) but im not 100% sure...anything else i should be looking at?

[TCGrove]

Have you ever changed your front wheel bearing/hub assemblies? This is a notorious problem with these vehicles. There are many posts related to it. I would be amazed that you made it 130K without replacing them. I've done mine 3 to 4 times over 159K miles. It's a good place to start checking. Just jack the front end up and see if the wheels hubs are loose. (That's if they are really gone).

[Wonderboard]

Had the same issue recently on a 02 LS4X4. Ended up being caused by worn ball joints. Took to a dealer for an alignment first, and was told the ball joints, and idler arm were bad. I changed the ball joints, and sound went way, then changed idler arm, took to dealer for alignment(60.00).

The dealer quoted around 800 for aftermarket ball joints, and 1200 for factory. Idler arm was around 230 I think. I did it myself with the help of this forum though, so cost was about 350.00(I went ahead and replaced wheel hubs also), they were 95.00 each at Amazon.

[TCGrove]

I was just looking back at my records. I did the upper/lower ball joints, idler arm, and pitman arm at 128,681 miles. I was having road noise at the time, went in for an alignment, and they told me "don't bother until you replace these parts." Also, front left wheel hub was done at 127,691 and front right at 135,090 miles.