Normally you wont hear anything but if I take an extended trip. Like a 50 miles drive. Its as if something is heating up and causing this loud rub noise as heard in the video linked below. The tires are new, it has disc brakes on all tires, the rotors seem ok, not mint but not gouged or anything
This will happen anytime I drive for a period of time on the highway. However oince it starts doing it , it will continue even at slow speeds until the car is turned off and “cooled down” for a bit then the sound will be gone.
In the video when you hear the noise stop that is me pushing my brakes. If the brakes are pressed the noise completely stops.
If I turn the wheel 3 degrees to the right, the noise completely stops. It can be hard to tell but it sounds like its coming from the Rear driver side
Its only if I am going straight and not applying the brakes that its this constant sound. And sometimes it will eventually just stop making the sound after 30 miles of hearing it and just run normal again even without stopping to let it “cool down”
Any ideas what it might be? I am not a car guy and would like some information to tell the mechanic because it is such a unique problem and cant replicate it for them since it takes 50+ miles of doing 70mph before it will start doing it.
If your mechanic pulls both rear wheels, I am pretty confident that he will find a bad wheel bearing.
Because this is a potential safety issue, I would suggest that you have this taken care of a.s.a.p.
Great, thanks, I will take it in on Monday and drive my other car for the weekend. What is estimated cost for this issue so I know I am not getting cheated if it is a wheel bearing
You didn’t provide quite enough info on your vehicle for a bearing replacement estimate, but for a 2010 CX-7 2wd w/the non-turbo 2.5 , the rear hub and bearing parts cost appears to be around $300, and about an hour’s labor, so around $400 for one side, parts and labor. The experts here usually recommend to replace both sides when one side’s bearings goes bad. Thinking the other side is probably soon to fail too. You may have just got a marginal original bearing that came w/the car, or hit a pothole only on that side though. Pays your money and takes your chances and all that.
I took it to the highest google rated mechanic in the area, they charged $137 just to look at it for an hour
They say they cant replicate the problem and dont see anything wrong with any of the bearings and that If I want they can throw new bearings on for $800 but that they cant be positive it would fix it.
They said they see no signs of a safety issue and they recommend to continue driving it until it gets more obvious.
Is that not the most unhelpful answer? I even showed them the video and sound that I posted above. They didnt seem to care or say it helped identify anything.
So now I am out $140 with only a guess as to what it might be and that guess costs an additional $800
That could be the going rate for diagnostic service in your area. If you had them do the work they may have waived that charge, some places do.
I doubt they would take the chance of telling you to continue driving if they even had a thought of bearing failure. You could get a second opinion but that would just be more money or you could find a less costly place to replace both bearings. I can’t see any mechanic making a call by a sound video if they have not heard the noise in person.
Alright thanks for the insight. Safety aside I cannot tolerate drivng and hearing that noise even if it is not frequent that I drive long distances so I just ate the $900 and told them to fix it, I hope it will resolve my problem. I don’t know about cars enough to argue otherwise. But it will be fixed tomorrow and I will definately give a post here after I take it for a long drive and let you guys know if it was the bearing or not.
Is your car the AWD version? As I understand it, it will send 50% to the rear, except when braking. I am NO expert, just thinking out loud - it sounded like a bad U joint when I listened to it.
The shop’s perspective – were I allowed a guess – is that from their experience working on hundreds of cars with a similar problem, it is better in this situation for the customer to wait until the symptom becomes more obvious before taking action to fix it. Thinking that there’s some chance it has nothing to do with the bearings, so replacing the bearings would then be a waste of your money. They’re saying – I think – to wait until it is obvious enough that their shop tech is able to clearly observe it. I don’t think they were trying to deceive you or rip you off. But I also think there’s a fairly good chance you’ve now fixed the problem. Only time will tell. And if you had over 100,000 miles on those bearings anyway, no harm done, they were probably due for a change out soon anyway. Normally wearing parts and all.
Luckily shop caught it and did not have to do my bearings, the driver side rear break was rubbing on the caliper, so it was just rear breaks and calipers. Drove it 100 miles to Palm Beach and back , zero noise. And car stops on a dime now, I didnt notice how bad they must of been, They were really rusted and sticking I guess
Glad you got it fixed without replacing the bearings. The replacement bearings might have introduced problems you don’t yet have, as they are oem original to the car.
