brotha bran
Veteran Member
I'll try to make this as concise as possible. This is pertaining to our 2003 Golf.
Long story short: Passenger front wheel bearing was replaced summer of 2010 after we noticed a whirring noise that increased with speed. Noise went away. Fast forward to a couple months ago, the same noise but slightly less loud reappears, and is quite evident when you turn the car to the right. Assuming we have caught the driver's side wheel bearing in it's early stages of death, we have a local VW shop replace the driver's side. Problem solved, right? Nope. Well the noise has now just shifted so when you turn left, you hear the whirring noise. It mostly only happens above 20 MPH or so, or at least that's when you start to hear it. No noise (from what I can hear) occurs when driving straight or turning right, but only when turning left.
So I bypass the VW shop and take it into my local Tire Factory. They've done a few jobs for us before with tires/wheels and they're good people. Their diagnosis, after throwing a Chassis Ear onto it and listening to various points, is that the wheel bearings are fine, but they believe it's in the transmission. Color me skeptical or maybe I'm just afraid of it actually being something that severe. I'm going to pick the car up in a few hours after they finish doing an alignment for me...so we'll see what's next..
So, I don't know what my next step is...I believe maybe a call to Matthew at Zahntech as he's the only guru I'm aware of here in WA. I wish someone was closer by in the Olympia area who could take a look at it.
ANY help at all would be highly appreciated. Could this be in the transmission? Should I check the transmission fluid?? Is it *really* a wheel bearing and everyone I've taken the car to is a dolt?
*Here's the kicker: I NEED this car to get us from WA to Oakland early next week, safely.
Long story short: Passenger front wheel bearing was replaced summer of 2010 after we noticed a whirring noise that increased with speed. Noise went away. Fast forward to a couple months ago, the same noise but slightly less loud reappears, and is quite evident when you turn the car to the right. Assuming we have caught the driver's side wheel bearing in it's early stages of death, we have a local VW shop replace the driver's side. Problem solved, right? Nope. Well the noise has now just shifted so when you turn left, you hear the whirring noise. It mostly only happens above 20 MPH or so, or at least that's when you start to hear it. No noise (from what I can hear) occurs when driving straight or turning right, but only when turning left.
So I bypass the VW shop and take it into my local Tire Factory. They've done a few jobs for us before with tires/wheels and they're good people. Their diagnosis, after throwing a Chassis Ear onto it and listening to various points, is that the wheel bearings are fine, but they believe it's in the transmission. Color me skeptical or maybe I'm just afraid of it actually being something that severe. I'm going to pick the car up in a few hours after they finish doing an alignment for me...so we'll see what's next..
So, I don't know what my next step is...I believe maybe a call to Matthew at Zahntech as he's the only guru I'm aware of here in WA. I wish someone was closer by in the Olympia area who could take a look at it.
ANY help at all would be highly appreciated. Could this be in the transmission? Should I check the transmission fluid?? Is it *really* a wheel bearing and everyone I've taken the car to is a dolt?
*Here's the kicker: I NEED this car to get us from WA to Oakland early next week, safely.