My 06 coupe has a deep rumbling in front between 10-20 mph. It sounded more intense when breaking, so I figured it was a warped rotor. I replaced the front rotors and pads today, and the rumbling is less but still prominent. Maybe it's just the tires? They're not worn out; the pressure is consistently 35 psi all around, and the alignment feels excellent when driving. Any ideas?

 

broken wheel wights ?

 

First of all you posted in the sedan section. However since this is a common problem you'll probably get some responses. My guess is your front tires are feathered. They will look all right to the untrained eye and the car will track straight and true, but produce a "roaring" sound which gets worse when breaking. It almost sounds like a big truck on off road tires. Only solution is to raplace them. Have your alignment checked though. Out of whack camber will cause this.

 

Check your wheel bearing.

 

Will that make more noise when braking? I was under the impression it's more of a constant noise.

 

Could depend on load...when braking, more load on he front bearings. But i agree..i think you'd hear something at all speeds if it was the bearing

 

I would say feathering tires...if so, get your TOE checked

 

^^^ sounds correct. Same thing happened with my Z. The inside of the front tires were worn due to off TOE. I flipped the tires and noise went away.

 

Bingo.

 

I was under the impression that toe causes the inner tire to wear down too quickly and camber causes tire feathering if it's out of whack. I am starting to experience feathering at 11,000 miles on my front tires. I'm in spec on toe, and out of spec on my camber which seems to support my belief.

Total toe .04 Specified range 0.00 to .16
camber -1.3 both sides Specified range -.8 to .7

I do have stock shocks/struts though at ~70K miles so that may have something to do with the wear on the front tires. I will replace shocks and tires this summer along with a front camber kit as I plan to drop the car lower than it sits now on H Techs.

 

Toe causes the tire to feather, it feathers because the tire is scuffing on the road. Also if your toe is out, it can wear on the outter edge or inner edge depends on if it's toe'd + (out) and - (in). If its toe'd out it wears the inner edge and toed in it wears the outter edge.
Alot of camber would wear tires on the inner edge, but you will know when your cambers is out big on one side because the car will pull hard. Check for out of round tires, if there out of round you can drive slow(10mph) take your hand off the steering wheel and the wheel will move back and forth. I highly doubt its a wheel bearing, they dont start making noise until you hit 40mph unless its completely blown out and you wont see this happen because the front hub is packed and comes as a complete assembly so the bearing has no where to go. also check your front end, a loose ball joint, tie-rod, broken stablizer's etc.. can cause a shutter when braking.

 

Then what is the simple explanation for my tires to be feathering at 10,000 miles? Toe is spot on at .04. I'm still leaning towards shock replacement but could there be a hidden cause? Tires are balanced properly and not out of round. I don't drive my car like a maniac, I'm pretty civil with it most of the time so I don't think driving style has influenced this kind of wear. All of my suspension components are rock solid with no worn bearings or bent rods.

I'm at a loss to explain the wear at this point.

OP sorry this turned into a thread jack.

 

Thanks everyone. The noise is definitely a roaring sound, and it is worse during braking. It does, in fact, sounds like road noise on a truck, and it is only between 25-35 mph, suggesting a certain resonant frequency of the tires. Tire wear due to bad alignment makes sense because when I bought this car used it out of alignment and I made the dealer realign it before I took delivery. The tires have plenty of room left and they're expensive, so I'm going ignore the noise for now, wear down another 6 months of tread and then buy new tires, get an alignment, and if the camber needs adjustment I'll replace the upper arms with an adjustable camber kit.

 

Blue dream, have your camber adjusted back into spec. Your toe is fine, like you said before. best bet would be have that properly adjusted, flip your tires on your wheels (hopefully your not running asemical thread pattern) and go from there. I found on my g35 when i was running a 20" wheel that the tire would wear faster on the rear inner edges, thats because my suspension sat in a differnet postion with the big overall wheel diameter. I made the camber and rear toe adjustment and the tire wear has slowed down alot.

 

Thanks man. I'm getting the front kits this summer and replacing my shocks. If that doesn't do it I give up I just didn't expect the camber to cause this kind of wear since it's soooo close to spec.