Ok, so I'm pulling into my parking spot and I noticed a rotational grinding noise coming from the front of my car. My first thoughts were "great I waited too long to do my brake maintenance" so instead of parking I thought I'd drive around a bit and make sure it was in fact a braking noise. Its not. The frequency of the sound is proportional to my speed but it occurs even when I'm not on the brakes. I was too tired and it was too dark to investigate so it looks like I need to make some time this week to jack it up and check it out.

Aside from the brakes, any other thoughts of what this may be or what I should look for?

 

Just from that, it sounds so much like the breaks. Maybe the pads are not retracting? Do you hear it when higher speed driving? Or, slower? If you have applied the breaks, then kept driving the bpads may not be retrating all the way. It still sounds like break. I could be wrong, I am not a mechanic. Good luck.

 

yeah i would say breaks too..

cant really think of anything else.. ???


umm.... check your power steering fluid. I know when mine was low it made a noise like you described, but only really when turning. Check that...

but I really think its the breaks, if so.... better go down to AUTOZONE or ECSTUNING and get some new pads before you wear em rotors... then you're talking MORE MONEY!!

 

when my car sta for a while the rotos got some buildup on them.... if your cars been sitting maybe that could help.. as for anything else? wheelbearings perhaps.... especially if you have wheel spacers... thats my 2 cents

 

sounds to me like a wheel bearing issue. how many miles do you have on the car? are they the original bearings? mine started going around 100,000 miles.

 

Thanks for all the feedback guys. I got it looked at and so far it looks liks its a 90% chance that its a wheel bearing problem. The brakes look fine so the only way to tell is to take the spindel apart. Looks like I have a good project ahead of me. Oh well, it will have to wait until next weekend. Maybe if there isn't a good DIY for replacing the wheel bearings, I'll write one up.

 

By the way,nvr_follow_a4, I have about 83k miles on the original bearings. Thanks again.