Grinding noise 2005 Prius Sounds like Wheel Bearing

[doa2mi]

Wondered if anyone has had wheel bearing issues with 05 Prius. Car has 45k miles on it. Drove it to Church (wife's car) Sunday and there was a serious grinding noise coming from what I could best determing the L F wheel. Is there a way I could easly diagnose the problem? Jack it up, and shake the tire etc?

Headed to the dealer on Wednesday, just wondering if anyone has had similar issues. What to expect? How far are they going to bend me over...etc........

BTW wife says, oh yea been meaning to mention this to ya!! Ya gotta love er.

Thanks in advance for your input..

[seasalsa]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(I4CSNOW @ Jul 16 2007, 11:11 AM) [snapback]479701[/snapback]</div>

Wondered if anyone has had wheel bearing issues with 05 Prius. Car has 45k miles on it. Drove it to Church (wife's car) Sunday and there was a serious grinding noise coming from what I could best determing the L F wheel. Is there a way I could easly diagnose the problem? Jack it up, and shake the tire etc?

Headed to the dealer on Wednesday, just wondering if anyone has had similar issues. What to expect? How far are they going to bend me over...etc........

BTW wife says, oh yea been meaning to mention this to ya!! Ya gotta love er.

Thanks in advance for your input..
[/b]

Sounds like a rock stuck in the shroud and rubbing on rotor. Had that happen to me last fall. It has been reported here several times.

[doa2mi]

I'll check, but this sounds more like metal on metal grinding. Thanks for the post, I will take the wheel off tonight and check for road debris.

[hobbit]

Bearings don't usually sound like metal-on-metal, at least at first.
More like a deep wooba-wooba-wooba. Your more "external" sound
may simply be rusty rotors -- try the Neutral cleanoff trick to see
if that improves things. [get up some speed, shift to N, do a fairly
hard but even braking to some lower speed]
.
After a wet night, my rotors sound *horrendous* until I get a chance
to do that. Cleans 'em right up.
.
_H*

[statultra]

my 05 prius got something stuck in teh front wheel and started to make noise until i hit a good bump, i believe its some road debris

[FL_Prius_Driver]

My '01 Prius had a bad rear bearing. What was interesting here is:
1) It was a very broadband general noise increase. Nothing like metal on metal. (I would be jacking up the offending wheel real quick since metal on metal is easy to run down.)
2) The bearing noise is very speed dependent. Not detectable at low wheel rpm. Overpowering at high rpm.
3) The service department actually had a senior technician come out and drive the car with me in it. They get a lot of "false alarms" and find it necessary to filter out self diagnoses. Unfortunately, I was right and it was a bad bearing. Darn.

[moshe1436]

My '07 Prius just got to 1000 miles yesterday. We love it but I have a concern that I wonder if anyone else in "PriusLand" has noticed. Right off when we picked up the vehicle I noticed a front end noise that sounds very much like something is either lose or affected by the wind and I can't find anything that appears to be lose. It doesn't change much with speed so I'm kind of eliminating the wind idea. The more I drive it, I'm wondering if the Goodyear Integreties are creating the noise from the road surface? Any thoughts?

moshe

[FL_Prius_Driver]

Without more details on the noise, it is hard to say. The tires will make significantly more noise when driving on cement roads and quite a bit less on asphalt roads. Pay attention that next time you go over a bridge (cement) vs a regular black interstate (asphalt) and see if the bridge noise matches the noise you are hearing.

[moshe1436]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(FL_Prius_Driver @ Jul 19 2007, 06:17 PM) [snapback]481861[/snapback]</div>

Without more details on the noise, it is hard to say. The tires will make significantly more noise when driving on cement roads and quite a bit less on asphalt roads. Pay attention that next time you go over a bridge (cement) vs a regular black interstate (asphalt) and see if the bridge noise matches the noise you are hearing.
[/b]

I just got back from a 1200 mile trip (the first long one) since we've owned the car. I couldn't be happier with it -- got 53.9 mpg on interstate travel today with only 1800 total miles on the car. This was done driving at the speed limit the entire trip. Didn't think I could ever drive that slow, but it was so much more relaxing -- my wife and I aren't really that exhausted for an 11 hour trip! Regarding the "noise" -- I did notice some changes in the "noise" depending on road surfaces so I suspect the tires are causing this, although the changes were not really that significant. The roads in NY are so bad that it's hard to find a really smooth surface anywhere! But I will continue to monitor this. Thanks for your comments!