Hi, my car is sounding like an airplane (best way I can describe it) while I’m driving. Someone told me it may be the wheel bearings but it’s not a wobbling sound, and it seems to be coming from the engine - although I can’t hear it when I’m under the hood and revving it then, only when driving, and can’t tell exactly where it’s coming from. The serpentine belt is new and the alternator, it was sounding the same before and after those install so I don’t think its that. Anyone by chance have a “push in the right direction” guess on what I may look for? It’s a little harder to hear, it’s louder in person, but I’ve uploaded a video below. Thanks!
The sound is coming from the secondary air injection pump located under the hood.
Tester
Ah cool, thanks! My wife has the car at work and I’ll check it all out when she home tonight. If it’s not a hose with a leak or such and I have to replace the pump, would it be ok for my wife to drive it to work this week and me do the replacing this weekend? She drives around 40-50 miles a day with her roundtrip. Thanks again!
The secondary air injection pump introduces air into the exhaust system to allow complete or near complete burning of un-burned fuel entering the exhaust system.
So, you can wait until the weekend.
Tester
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Hi, just now having a chance to mess with this car again. A couple days after my last post, my wife was on her way home from work, stopped and filled up on gas, and about 10 minutes after that the EPC light came on and she started losing power.
She pulled over, turned off the car, and when turned back on the EPC light was off but the engine light was on. I was able to get the car home but by taking backroads, not going over 40Mph, any time I did the EPC light would come back on and the car would go into “limp” mode.
I took the car the next morning to AutoZone and the error codes read P0300 (Random Misfire Detected), P0351 (Ignition Coil A Primary/Secondary Circuit), P0304 (Cylinder 4 Misfire Detected), P0301 (Cylinder 1 Misfire Detected). They said most likely I had a vacuum hose leak.
I inspected all the hoses, and they all look good from what I can tell, still new looking and attached well. We have a Halloween fog machine and I used that to blow smoke into the air intake hose the best I could but didn’t see any smoke escaping elsewhere - which I’m not sure that I would using that poor technique. Wonder if the EPC code was a coincidence to my original issue and maybe my wife got bad gas?
While at AutoZone I told them I needed a secondary air injection pump and they said my car didn’t have one. We called VW with my VIN # and they said the same. They said some 2014 VWs do but not mine.
If my car doesn’t have a secondary air injection pump, would something else make that “airplane” revving noise? When working on the car in the driveway we’ll rev it up in park and in neutral but don’t hear that noise, only when driving.
Sorry for the long email! Thanks!
In the video it sounds like you have noisy off-road tires, badly cupped tires or a very noisy wheel bearing.
Replace the ignition coil for cylinder # 1 and all of the spark plugs.
I have heard off road tires make that sound, also badly cupped tires do this. You can easily check that.
My 02 Saturn made that same sound but only over 50 mph. It 275k at the time and I was on a road trip. By the time I got home, 1500 miles later, you could hear it above 40 mph. Replaced the front wheel bearings and the noise went away.
Hi all, wanted to post an update. Thanks Nevada_545, the revving sound did end up being the front driver side wheel bearing, and the EPC light issue was fixed by replacing the ignition coil. Been driving great since replacing those. Thanks again.
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