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Your description does sound like a bad bearing. I've had 4 or 5 fail over the years in my various 240s, and every frigging time I get fooled into thinking it's a pebble stuck 'tween pad 'n rotor.
Every time I was wrong.
Swapping it is not really a tough job. You could do it outdoors in an hour or two providing you have the tools, appropriate (and safe) jacks, and a safe and secure place to jack up your car.
If you can find a junk Volvo with a good rear end and good axles (including the wheel studs), you can take the axle with bearing and its bearing cup, which is pressed into the axle housing, and swap it into your car. I've done that every time and never had a failure.
Remember to keep the bearing cup with the bearing -- they "break in" together and should not be separated after that.
If you pull the axle, be SURE to pack the bearing with wheel bearing grease.
It's entirely possible that you had a defective bearing. It's not common but not unheard of. One of the pecularities of bearings is that they follow a "bathtub curve" lifetime. A good used bearing has a better chance of survival than a new bearing. That is, once a new bearing makes it past infancy, it will last. But sometimes they die young.
--
Don Foster (near Cape Cod, MA)
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