Brian66D

Lately my car has been making a weird sound from the drivers side rear wheel area.... it has gotten worse with time.

It sounds like a "woooowowooooowowooooo" almost like a bad tire, but the tire is fine. The tire is only a couple months old. It gets more loud the faster i go.

I first off thought wheel bearing, but i'm not positive. I don't want to go to the stealer because they are pretty good at fvcking me.

It didn't bother me too much when it wasn't very loud, but lately it is getting really annoying.

thoughts and inputs?

TurboEnvy52

usually under $500 to fix. Just make sure there is no play in the wheel (left/right, Up/down.) If there is, you should get that fixed pronto. The wheel can and will come off if it gets bad enough. Also a big note, the longer you drive on it, the more expensive the repair will be. A lot of the time if you catch them early enough all you need to do is replace the bearing. If it goes to long then you need to replace the hub. The bearing will begin to grind away the hub area so the new bearing cannot just be pressed in because the housing will either not hold it, or it will just eat the new bearing up within a few months and you will be back at the shop shelling out even more money this time.

Sometimes it is easier to just buy the entire hub assembly and swap that in and out. This is easier becasue all you ahve to do is pull the tire the brake system on that wheel and then a few bolts. Then pop the new one back in, where as replacing the bearing involves a press (and any slip ups with the press can cause you to damage the hub thus forcing you to buy a new hub anyway.) I have seen around a bearing kit that allows you to pull/push in the new bearing while the hubs are an the car. I think Miktip is a knows a lot about this, i have a press so i would just use that. Its all about what you have and want to do.

Just dont go to long on them, i've driven on them for about a year. It all depends on the driving and even what wheels you are using. When i had on summer tires that were wider the bearing made a LOT of noise. Put on the snows, and the noise got much quieter, but over the winter it got almost as loud as the summers.

-JIM

Diztek

could also be that the tires are cupped. do you rotate regularly?

seencats

if your friendly with your advisor they sometimes will check it out and if its not covered they will let you know and you can decide what you want to do.


That might be your best bet

Sean

Vier Glühende Ringe

If you move the steering wheel back and forth a bit while going 45mph or so does the noise change?

Brian66D

They actually stole my belly pan and cracked a washer hose when i was in for a simple oil change.

The tires are about 3 months old but i do alot of highway driving. They are Cooper Zeon ZPT's...they weren't cheap.

I've tried to move the wheel, it doesn't have any play so i guess that is a good thing.

I don't understand why the steering wheel turning would affect the rear wheel bearing?

The sound changes with speed. Slower = softer, faster = gradually louder....

A reference to how much i drive.....in august = 59,000Miles. Today= 94,000Miles.

diagnosticator1

on the inside or outside wheels, increasing or decreasing the load on the wheel bearings. In the case of a noisy/faulty bearing when the load pressure goes up, the noise gets louder, and vice versa.

A4Driver

... It all started a couple of weeks ago when I started hearing a low-pitched whining noise while I was driving. I decided to check my power-steering fluid and yup, it was very low. So I added some fluid and the noise went away -- for awhile.

Now I'm hearing the noise again, but it is a little different. First of all, I only hear it when I am driving <b>slowly</b> -- or when I start to accelerate or when I decelerate to a slow speed, say about 5 mph.
The noise doesn't seem to correspond to any steering inputs; I can be going straight and I still hear the noise.

I can even hear it if the car is at a dead stop, and in neutral, and I slowly step on the accelerator. But I only hear it if I keep the revs <b>under</b> 2,000.

So, I'm taking the car to my dealer on Monday in hopes they can determine what it is. My guess is that it's either the P/S pump, the belt tensioner or the transmission. Whatever it turns out to be, something tells me it's going to cost a <b>fortune</b> to fix.
.
.
.
.

Brian66D

car from one side to the other....so this is a wheel bearing then?

diagnosticator1

will exhibit the symptoms you described, occurring under those specific conditions. The only way to know for sure, is to jack up that wheel, and remove the wheal, and turn the hub and listen/feel for rough or noisy bearing. In advanced failure, the hub will be sloppy in the wheel bearing housing, and can be moved by hand within the range of motion.