my car is making a noise that i cannot diagnose. it sounds like a bad diff or wheel bearing (wurring/grinding sort of noise, if you’ve had a bad diff or wheel bearing you know what i mean), but it doesn’t act like one. the noise sounds like it’s coming from the back of the car, though i can’t be 100% sure since the sound sort of resonates throughout the car.
it gets louder/higher pitch with higher speed and makes sound at any speed, but it doesn’t clunk or even change sound when you get on and off the gas like a bad diff would, and it doesn’t change sound when you swerve side to side like a bad wheel bearing does. the only thing i can do to make it change sound is pull the e-brake… it gets quieter the harder i pull the e-brake but it will never quite go away. pressing the brake pedal doesn’t change the sound however.
the car is a '93 hatch, SR20, 5 lug, Z32 brakes, otherwise stock.
any input/suggestions are appreciated.
when you did your RR 5lug what bearings did you use? new or used ones? if you had used, did you press out the existing hubs and press in the new ones yourself?
iirc, increasing cyclic noise from the RR with increasing speed is typically NG wheel bearing(s). from the sounds of it, it looks like you have mostly radial play instead of the usual lateral. from my experience, it’s been pretty much lateral issues, but radial is still possible. also, is the sound occurring constantly (as in, is there noise for a full wheel rotation or does it only occur during one part of the rotation). best thing to do really with minimal effort is to jack up the RR and manually rotating the wheel yourself and try to reproduce the sound and feel out the play…or you could have a friend drive it in gear while jacked up and with the wheels off, you could take a look. g/l
the bearings are from a 300zx convertible that had less than 100,000km on it and it didn’t make the constant whurring noise after i did the swap for a couple weeks, just started recently. i removed/installed them myself, used a block of wood on the backside with a hammer to gently tap them out, then used the bolts to pull it into the 240 spindle, going around in a circle a half turn at a time.
it makes the same noise regardless of the rotation of the wheel.
thanks for the help.
hold on so when you’re talking about tapping them out with a hammer and using the bolts to pull it back into the spindle, you’re referring to the whole hub and bearing assembly right? that being the hub already pressed into the bearing. can you confirm with me that you never at one point fooled around with removing the hub from the bearing itself (shouldn’t have to if the bearings you’re putting in were good)?
if i were you, i’d do a quick swap back to my old 4 lug and do a test run to see where the problem follows. shouldn’t take that long anyway since you had them out recently. check your backing plate clearances too if the noise is not occuring for a full wheel rotation (ie. cyclic skipping). sometimes it gets pretty rusty back there and the buildup starts to interfere with the rotating backside of the wheel bearing.
no, never had the bearing out of the hub, i just unbolted the hubs from the spindles.
also it’s made a higher pitched noise on deceleration around 2500rpm since i got the car when it was still all stock and 4 lug, i’m almost positive this one is a diff noise. this makes me think the other one is due to a bad diff. i forgot to mention that earlier.
yeah check the spider gears of the diff maybe or swap a spare if you have a link