e53 4.8is Rotational Metallic sound?

[brucemillar]

Friends

This morning driving along in Cruise set at 70mph on a gentle downhill slope, I get a sudden vibration up through the car and steering wheel with a rumble sound. It feels like I have a puncture?

I slow the car and the noise and vibration stop when I get down to under 40mph.

Now I can hear a metallic clanking, like something hitting a wheel and a very faint vibration through the steering wheel. This is louder when I open the passenger window, pointing to the problem coming from the passenger (its a RHD car) side, front wheel. It also seems worse when tight cornering/full lock. But it does match wheel speed - tick, tick, tick. Applying the brakes does not change the problem.

I have made an appointment with my local wheel guy tomorrow so that we can get in the air and have a look at what is going on. It feels like something broke suddenly. A visual with the wheels on the car shows no obvious damage.

Any ideas? Drive shaft? Bearing? Oh.... I have wheel spacers all round, These are hub-centric spacers. Wondering if one has failed?

[oldskewel]

are the wheel balancing weights all in place?

[brucemillar]

Cannot see any missing weights and it sounds like something is hitting in time with wheel speed.

[PropellerHead]

Originally Posted by brucemillar

Cannot see any missing weights and it sounds like something is hitting in time with wheel speed.

My hope upon hopes is that it's a rock (or something) stuck in the caliper/rotor/hub. If it goes away and didn't kill anything else, hopefully your sound goes away too and you're good. Crossing those fingers wishing you luck!

[svvg]

Hi mate - a couple of thoughts:

1) It could be the heat shield. I t has have a gutter/channel in it (the heat shield is folded to produce a lip/gutter/channel to allow water to run off) - mine had rusted to bggery and were also bent and touching the discs. Try pushing them back with a screw driver poked through the wheel spokes. I cut the channel off of mine as it was full of crp and rocks and rust (it's about 3-5 mm - so still functions as a brake heat shield....).

2) Could be a wheel bearing - have your brakes gone spongey? If a wheel bearing goes really bad then it will take two pumps of the pedal to go hard - first one squares the wheel in the bearing - second one does the braking... but they'd be pretty far gone for that to happen (had it in a track car a few years ago).

I'd try pushing back the heat shield first as it pss easy to do, quick and free...

[brucemillar]

Well it was the Passenger side 'outer' CV joint that exploded, losing nearly all of it's ball bearings and some bent twisted metal bearing material.

Replaced both side out bearings and all is good. Thanks to all for trying to help me out here.

[svvg]

Blimey! Just caught mine before the boots completely split - must have been damaged a while!

[brucemillar]

Originally Posted by brucemillar

Well it was the Passenger side 'outer' CV joint that exploded, losing nearly all of it's ball bearings and some bent twisted metal bearing material.

Replaced both side out bearings and all is good. Thanks to all for trying to help me out here.

This is the destroyed cv still in situ. Note all the ball-bearings have gone. I found two in the undertray.

Car is all back and good now. With two new front outers & a full geometry alignment.



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[brucemillar]

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