Hey everyone, I need some help trying to find the source of a droning sound that increases with speed as the speed of my car increases. The sound starts as what I would describe as a grinding/droning sound that starts at about 20 mph and continues and still exists at 70+mph. My Outlander has 167k miles on it and has had essentially zero problems getting there. Recently this sound and slight vibration is driving me crazy. At first I thought wheel bearing, and have changed all 4, with no change in the sound or vibration.

Then I thought it could be an inner CV joint as the both inner booths did have some grease leaked out around the axle shaft. I changed both today and the vibration still exists and so does the droning/grinding sound, no change. The brakes were changed with new rotors 6 months ago and I don't see any signs of dragging shields or rotor warp. The car does't pull one way or another when I apply the brakes to slow.

I have put the car on jack stands and ran it through the gears with the speedo getting up to about 60 mph to try to pinpoint the sound. The only thing this made me aware of is when the tranny shifts to 4th gear, a sound does present itself through the rest of the gears (but doesn't sound the same, maybe due to lack of load?), but when i manually shift back down to 3rd it goes away. When driving the car on the road, it doesn't matter what gear the car is in, the droning sound exists.

With all this info can anyone help me pinpoint what this may be? I am out of ideas and think it just may be time to trade the car in because I am thinking it is something in the tranny causing the noise and vibration while accelerating mainly.

One last thing, the tires are about 4 years old, seem to balance fine and have about 30k miles on them. The sound doesn't change in relation to where the tires are when rotated and they are a little noisy on asphalt, even noisier on concrete as I would expect.

Thanks for the help that can be offered or any ideas of what I could do to figure out what is going on.

 

I think the first one to eliminate is the tires. Granted they don't have that many miles on them, but some change significantly over the life of the tire.

Did this sound increase gradually over time, or just start all of a sudden?

 

I know it is a pain, but might want to try to put the spare on and test out tires one by one.

when was the last time you changed your transmission fluid?

 

Hey guys, thanks for the reply. So to answer the questions. When I rotate and move the tires around, it doesn't change the sound. No change in where it seems to be coming from. It sounds like it is coming from the front end of the car somewhere in the center. Moving front tires to the back made no change in the sound. Also, having them balanced and rotated made no difference.

The transmission fluid has been changed a few times since I have had the car. I had a total flush done around 100k at a shop, then shortly after realized they used some garbage fluide. So at about 115k I did a drain and flush at home swapping out about 8 quarts total with redline D6. At roughly 140k miles I did this again with redline D6 and 6 quarts of fluid again. This fluid does work pretty amazingly in the transmission and really smoothed it out after the shop had placed the wrong fluid. When I changed the axles the other day, I had to drain some fluid and it didn't seem too burnt or abused at the time. I have ordered a case of the Halvoline MTF fully synthetic fluid and plan to change it just in case.

I swapped both cv axles on 2/5 and it seems that now my car actually shudders more when under acceleration. It is most likely my fault as I didn't use really expensive axles and they are probably junk. I they are "new" axles from DTA (Drive Tech America). They were pretty much about the only axles I could find in a relatively short time without spending OEM money for new axles. The axles I pulled seem fine except for the small amount of grease leakage around the shaft at the inner joint. That being said all 4 joints seem pretty sturdy and don't make any noise being manipulated by hand and have no play in them, so maybe I will just put them back in.... Yeah for 3 more hours of auto work.

Any other thoughts, the noise the car makes sounds kind of like a growling, it seems to start at about 18 mph is what I noticed this morning. If it didn't sound so metallic, I would think it may be the tires. I could be totally wrong but the noise never moving with tire rotation really makes me believe they aren't the culprit.

Also, I think the sound has been there for a while, but it does seem to be getting worse over the last few months. Maybe I should just turn up the volume and ignore it.... The car does have a nice sound system at least.

 

if I were you, I'd try to take a sample of the ATF fluid you have in there now and send it off to a lab to have it looked at...costs about 30-40 bucks. I'm going to do the same on mine as more of a checkup when I change mine next. I send mine off to blackstone labs.

 

So after hours of turning wrenches and chasing a noise, I have finally found what it is. Today I traded wheels and tires with another car just to rule out the tires. Well, it is the tires. It is strange to me that the tires were making this kind of noise, since it has such a metallic grinding/growling sound to it. I guess I am happy that it isn't a serious problem, but now I am reserved to listen to a sound until it is time to replace the tires. At least I have learned a lot about changing some important parts and maybe my car will last several thousand more miles with the new bearings that it has now, along with new transmission fluid to boot. Thanks everyone for the suggestions and help.

 

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Good info. Thanks for keeping the thread updated to the end.

 

You might want to go back to wherever you bought the tires and discuss it with them.

Years ago, we put a set of Destination LE tires at a Firestone tire shop. You could have swore we put mudders on by the sound it made...but since the Destination LE tires were technically "truck" tires, we thought that's just how it was. Many miles later, I was back at the shop getting an alignment and while they weren't busy, I brought the noise to their attention. They looked confused and said it shouldn't do that at all. They ended up warranting them out for a new set...we did have to pay for the tread used, but it really wasn't much. Never hurts to ask.