My car has started making a growling sound while driving. It gets louder over 60 mph and after 50+ miles at 60+mph, the growling is very noticeable at all speeds, even in town traffic. I jacked the car up and checked all wheel bearings, nice and tight and no growling when I spin them. Put the car in gear and no growling sound when spinning in the air (car was not warmed up when I did this). I suspect the differential. I checked transmission fluid and it is full, but ugly. Will bad fluid cause a growl? Also, I don't have Toyota WS fluid but was told Valvoline Maxlife Multi vehicle fluid is acceptable to use. Should I use it? I have it here right now. Also, the transmission and differential use the SAME fluid, or are they somehow separated inside the trans axle?
Change the transmission fluid with Toyota Original .. you can buy from local dealer or shop online.. The growling with wheel bearing usually changes "tone" with slight change in gas. Tires, are they good? Tires, especially winter tires can make noise
If there's no sound in the air with the car in gear; WHY do you think it's the transmission/transaxle???????????? Isn't it spinning when you had the car in gear in the air??????? I've had bad wheel bearings that didn't present themselves until you loosened the half-shaft and what about the rear axles. You running that Prius on only two wheels?????? If you loosen that half-shaft nut and push it back 1/4 inch; your wheel will wobble if that bearing is gone. The hub will also heat up, due to all the friction. Don't wait too long cause things will start wielding together.
Wheel bearings usually present noise loaded with weight . In air almost nothing . Now take stehscope whilst spinning carefully listen to bearing housing rt at axle penetration . You hear the balls moving round scrape scrape etc . Pull it out of ears ya hear nada .
I'm with Mr. saneesh8 here; check your tires first. I had a 2001 Saturn that I would have sworn had a failing wheel bearing RH side; classic growling sound that changed pitch with speed. No play or noise in the bearing when jacked up, same as OP here. My neighbor suggested I swap the front tires L-R and drive the car... Bingo, noise switched to the left side. Replaced that tire, no more noise. Turns out that certain tires will do that from wear. Saved me a bunch of grief not to mention $$. You might give that a shot; nothing to lose except a few excess calories lol. Good luck!
My tires are in good shape, I bought them long before my car started making this noise. They are the same brand and tread of tires as the previous tires they replaced. Tires are at 75-80% with perfect tread wear.
Are you talking about the spindle nut that can be seen as soon as the hub cap is removed? My initial gut diagnosis was the right front wheel bearing because the most vibration as at the passengers feet. Since my transaxle was full when I checked it, it pretty certain it is a wheel bearing that I missed the first time I checked. The wheel bearings "seemed" fine the first time I checked them...but I am going to do an in depth inspection starting with the front right corner of the car where the noise seems the loudest. I am used to my old Ford's and Chevies that when you check for a bad wheel bearing, they are super easy to immediately tell which one is the bad one
You can see from my old how to tell which wheel bearing? thread that sometimes it's really hard. All the different rules of thumb people usually suggest were falling flat, and I had to go get my hands on a ChassisEar before I could actually be sure which bearing it was. On the bright side, once the ChassisEar was hooked up, picking out the bad bearing took like three seconds.
I wouldn't put anything but the Toyota WS in it. That's a totally different transmission/transaxle than other automatic transmissions. It doesn't have the friction surfaces like what's been used before. Don't mess with what works. Go to the dealer and get what you need. If someone put something else in it, get enough to flush that out of your car too. Does the noise change with the speed? Does it change when your turning left, turning right? Can you get someone to drive by you so you can listen for which corner of the car the noise is coming from? I also lost a wheel bearing and it didn't make any noise. The way I found out that I had a bearing problem was that the tires were cupping. I jacked up the car and wiggled the tire side to side, then up and down. Side to side is likely to be a tie rod problem; up and down is likely to be a ball joint. I did get the excess play, but when I looked at what was wiggling, it wasn't either. It was the wheel bearing. Could it be a corroded/bent dust cover? One of the plastic underbody panels or wheel liners that's tangled up on something or dragging?
Cupping can be worn out shocks, wheel bouncing up and down rapidly. The reason you need to back-off the spindle nut is because the wheel bearing is sandwiched against the wheel hub. You won't find "play" unless that bearing has be howling for a good long while, and is totally destroyed. If the bearing is in the early stages of going bad; you'll find wiggle, once you back-off and push the shaft back a little. If the bearing is fine, there won't be any "play" - it'll be as solid as the tight spindle nut. FWIW: this also works on 4wd too. A guy on YouTube actually removed one of his front half-shaft on his 4x4 to figure out which bearing/hub was bad. It was a newer auto-locker, so a bit expensive on the replacement. I guess that's what you have to do, when you don't know any better....
Initially reading that I missed the double negative. Smoke’s still coming outa my ears lol. Toyota ATF WS, nothing else.
Mine was growling badly. It wasn't until the test drive yesterday when I really noticed the lack of noise with the new bearing in! Weird that it was so loud, but had no effect on steering, fuel mileage, or tire wear. I returned the Maxlife fluid and ordered some WS off the interwebs because although I am capable of doing a tranny swap, my wallet doesn't like the idea and it is labor I would rather avoid I didn't see this until after I had fixed the car. I am sure with 237,000 miles on my car the other one will fail within two months, two years, or two decades. I'll back the nut off and check for play at that time Mine was really obvious which wheel was making the noise. My non mechanic GF also made a very clear note that whatever was wrong was under her feet!!!
