Hello, and thank you in advance to those who are willing to brave this one…
I bought my 2001 Hyundai Elantra about 2 years ago with 76,000 miles on it. I have over 90,000 now and the problem I’m going to describe has been going on for at least a year. As I accelerate to higher speeds (starting at about 45 mph and increasing up to 70) my car seriously sounds like a jet engine that is powering up. Although noticeable at around 45mph, freeway speeds make a tremor in the steering wheel readily apparent. Whatever the issue is seems to be causing my car to shake in general because my rear view mirror will vibrate and buzz and generally blur the rear view while I drive at higher speeds. The car does not veer off to the side when I let go of the wheel, but I do notice that turning left decreases the jet engine sound and the buzzing of the rear view mirror quite a bit. At lower speeds (around 20mph) when I drive with the windows down it almost sounds like I can hear something scraping from the front right wheel. It’s not constantly grinding but will sound off briefly with every revolution of the wheel. I recently tried to have my tires aligned and that seemed to help the sound quite a bit, but then the car would veer when I let go of the steering wheel. Also, after the alignment, the car felt like the front tires were not hitting at the same time when I would go over speed humps. The alignment didn’t seem to last very long, however, and the issues as I have described above are back in full. The outside tread of the front right wheel is noticeably worse than the other three tires, and the brakes on my front right tire seem to wear out rather quickly.
I thought it might be a wheel bearing or the wheel hub, but I’m honestly not sure if that’s the case or not and where to go if it is.
Any help on this would be much appreciate!