WarrenBoostit
Member
I recently crossed 71k miles in my 2018, and did some basic maintenance. Rotated tires, changed oil (Royal Purple, first time trying a K&N instead of Motorcraft filter), did the rounds, brakes seemed fine. The car, at least in my opinion, has been pretty well maintained, I had coolant, ptu and trans fluids swapped at 70k. A few days after this (with commutes in between), I took it on 2 hour trip north for the 4th, and it was around this time I began noticing a weird subtle sound coming from the front passenger side area.
I'll try my best to describe the sound; I hope to eventually capture actual audio of it, but it is quite quiet, and as this is my first loud car I've had, I now unfortunately realize it becomes much harder to diagnose weird noises.
It sounds a bit like a low pitched oscillating whirr or whistle from the front right side, slightly similar to intake noises or road noise, but different, like two fans hitting a resonant frequency. Nothing about it sounds grindy or metallic. If you were convincing and told me it was air getting trapped under the car somewhere, I might believe you. The sound only seems to come in, or be audible, during 30-50 mph, typically while coasting. I'm unsure if this is the actual range the sound is occurring in, or simply where it is still audible over the air, road and exhaust noise.
What is really messing with me is I can't find mechanically what the sound is attached to. It doesn't seem influenced by rpm, but also doesn't seem to really change pitch or volume with more wheelspeed, which kind of ruins my first guess, the bearings. It also doesn't really seem to get any louder with the windows down. I had the tires rebalanced yesterday as a precaution, but their balance had barely changed, and it didn't fix it. I also did the quick and dirty and sprayed some butane around vacuum lines in the engine while it idled to see if I could find any vacuum leaks, but I wasn't able to find any. I do hear a slight intermittent squeak when the car is idling, but its infrequent enough that maybe its just how you'd expect a 70k belt to behave on its last year or so. The one thing making this worse is that I looked under my car at the oil filter for the first time in a week, and noticed a dribble or two of oil hanging onto the oil filter. I'm crossing my fingers that it was just oil I forgot to cleanup when changing it last week, and that it's not some leaking filter or turbo or other nightmare, but I'm going to put some cardboard under the car tonight just to be sure.
Summarizing that word buffet, my best guess as of right now is that it is either the passenger side bearing just starting to go, so it hasn't gotten loud yet, or it is a bad tensioner, belt or water pump, though I'd be expecting a pretty audible squealing to accompany that.
Anyone been through something similar, or have good troubleshooting advice? Hopefully I'll have an actual audio sample to give soon.
Black 2018 SHO Non-PP | GH e30 Tune | PPE Catted Downpipes | DG2 Trans Mount | M-12405-35T plugs at .026 | 170 Tstat | 3 bar | H&R Springs | XDI-35 | GH IC | EPP Gen2 CAI | Noisemaker delete | MSD coils | EPP Hot Pipes | Black AR924 w/ General GMAX AS 05 255/45r20 | MRT axle back w/black tips
I'll try my best to describe the sound; I hope to eventually capture actual audio of it, but it is quite quiet, and as this is my first loud car I've had, I now unfortunately realize it becomes much harder to diagnose weird noises.
It sounds a bit like a low pitched oscillating whirr or whistle from the front right side, slightly similar to intake noises or road noise, but different, like two fans hitting a resonant frequency. Nothing about it sounds grindy or metallic. If you were convincing and told me it was air getting trapped under the car somewhere, I might believe you. The sound only seems to come in, or be audible, during 30-50 mph, typically while coasting. I'm unsure if this is the actual range the sound is occurring in, or simply where it is still audible over the air, road and exhaust noise.
What is really messing with me is I can't find mechanically what the sound is attached to. It doesn't seem influenced by rpm, but also doesn't seem to really change pitch or volume with more wheelspeed, which kind of ruins my first guess, the bearings. It also doesn't really seem to get any louder with the windows down. I had the tires rebalanced yesterday as a precaution, but their balance had barely changed, and it didn't fix it. I also did the quick and dirty and sprayed some butane around vacuum lines in the engine while it idled to see if I could find any vacuum leaks, but I wasn't able to find any. I do hear a slight intermittent squeak when the car is idling, but its infrequent enough that maybe its just how you'd expect a 70k belt to behave on its last year or so. The one thing making this worse is that I looked under my car at the oil filter for the first time in a week, and noticed a dribble or two of oil hanging onto the oil filter. I'm crossing my fingers that it was just oil I forgot to cleanup when changing it last week, and that it's not some leaking filter or turbo or other nightmare, but I'm going to put some cardboard under the car tonight just to be sure.
Summarizing that word buffet, my best guess as of right now is that it is either the passenger side bearing just starting to go, so it hasn't gotten loud yet, or it is a bad tensioner, belt or water pump, though I'd be expecting a pretty audible squealing to accompany that.
Anyone been through something similar, or have good troubleshooting advice? Hopefully I'll have an actual audio sample to give soon.
Black 2018 SHO Non-PP | GH e30 Tune | PPE Catted Downpipes | DG2 Trans Mount | M-12405-35T plugs at .026 | 170 Tstat | 3 bar | H&R Springs | XDI-35 | GH IC | EPP Gen2 CAI | Noisemaker delete | MSD coils | EPP Hot Pipes | Black AR924 w/ General GMAX AS 05 255/45r20 | MRT axle back w/black tips
