Noise from tires, wheel bearings or something else

[Roberto]

Hi,

I´m from Europe and my car is a 2001 Rover 25 2.0 Diesel.

In the last days i have noticed a strange sound in my car when driving between 60km/h and 80km/h (about 37mph and 50mph). I really don´t notice it in any other speeds.

I suspected from the wheel bearings but since i have 4 spare tires, i changed them, test them and it seems the noise went off or at least it decreased it a lot because i can´t hear it anymore.

So, i guess it should be the tires, but a doubt raised up. The spare wheels/tires are lighter and narrow (205/45R16 vs 185/65R14). Any chance the problem still be the wheel bearings but i only notice the problem in the bigger wheels/tires because any possible extra effort they can make in wheel bearings? I don´t know if this makes any sense.

It makes no difference in which gear the car is. It does the sound even the car is in neutral (manual transmission)…

I tried to lift the car (one wheel at a time) and tried to spin them. The rear wheels seems to spin fine, but the front ones doesn´t spin so well. They stuck in a specific position and i can hear some kind of “iron drag” noise. But i guess it should be normal since the car is FWD no?

I made a small video where the noise can be hear. Unfortunately i think it will not be notorious in some speakers. I can hear the noise perfectly in my phones but not in my laptop.

In the first part, i reached some higher speeds where i can´t hear nothing abnormal.

In the second part, the noise is very notorious. At 1.23 i slightly speed up and the noise almost gone.. then when the speed decreased again, the noise is back.

A kind of a digital interference can be heard but isn´t that sound.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNyrraE2lnM[/video]

Topic

[Josh G]

An “iron drag noise” doesn’t sound normal to me. How do your brake pads look? I assume the scrapping noise is coming from the brake area?

Also if you hear it in one spot only it sounds like you may have some kind of runout going on…Maybe your wheels weren’t torqued down evenly enough, rust scale behind or on the face of the rotor, rust scale on the wheel, the rotor itself may just be trash…all these things can cause runout. In other words, rather than all the metal surfaces aligning, there is a wobble in one of them. This may not be perceptible to the eye, but at high speeds it will cause problems.

Give it a good visual inspection…how do things look….really rusty? Low brake pad material? etc.

[Roberto]

Hi Jay,

First of all, thanks for your reply.

Now that you talk about the brakes, the discs were resurfaced some time ago because i felt a lot of vibration when braking at higher speeds. However i feel the car doesn´t brake like it should be. Even before being the resurfaced. The pads seems to have some material yet. I bought this kit as used from an Honda Civic because i wanted to upgrade my car to vented discs. It´s a common upgrade to this car.

And i already noticed another thing. When gently braking i ear an intermitent scrapping sound, like the one i ear when i spin the wheels. Tomorrow i´ll make a video spinning the wheels.

[Josh G]

Ok sounds good!

IDK about Europe, but rotors in the states are really cheap. Sounds like they may be shot, and if I personally couldn’t for sure find the source of the sound, the first thing I would do parts wise is replace the pads and rotors.

Also, sounds like you have changed the rotors from what they were originally. Even if what you did is a common modification, I always would be suspect of a part that is different than what the engineers originally designed. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I think you’ll find a lot of mechanics who dislike any modifications period. I think Eric has a video where he talks about how much he hates aftermarket stuff.

I say all that even though I recently installed a remote start into my minivan…works like a charm :woohoo: Then again I’m the only one that works on that van and I would much rather deal with my aftermarket installation than someone elses.

[Roberto]

You´re right when saying the rotors aren´t in good shape. I´m only waiting the pads wear out a little more to replace all.

I´m not a big fan neither about modifications but this modification is plug and play. In fact there were some models that came out with this vented discs kit (and the part number is the same as Honda), but mine was sold with solid discs.

The sound when driving, seems to disappeared when i changed the tires so maybe they are the source of the noise, but i´m not sure.

About that scratching noise and the wheel not freely spin, i tried in another car and it´s the same. However it seems it´s more continuous while in mine it isn´t. There are some positions when the wheel spins better than others.

Here´s the videos. Maybe it´s important to mention it was the only wheel jacked up.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv6fzUd7E_U&[/video]

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UoXGvudDQk[/video]

[Author]

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