Common Car and Truck Problem Noises Translated Explained and Diagnosed

You wanna hear something crazy? I feel like people kind of talk to me a little funny, just because I'm a mechanic. I don't understand why, but for some reason, people like to get expressive when they're talking to me.

Hey friends, it's Len here from 1A Auto. So in this video, I wanted to go over some strange noises that people have relayed to me to try to diagnose. But the reason why I wanna do it is so that if you hear these noises on your own, you can go ahead and diagnose it by yourself.

Now, there's gonna be a few things that you wanna start thinking about before you can start your diagnosis. Is this a symptom that you can only hear? What is that scraping noise? Or is it something that you can feel? Is it something that you notice while you're sitting still with the car running? Is it something that you feel while you're driving slow or even flying down the highway at the specified speed limit?

Something else that I always like to know is exactly how long this has been happening. Maybe you wrote it down on your calendar because you were trying to pay attention. Maybe it happened a couple days in a row, and then it seemed like it stopped for some reason and then it came back. Is it an intermittent issue? I need to know. One of the most common issues that people like to express to me when they're talking about issues with their vehicle is brake issues. They're driving around and maybe they hear like a "eee" or "cru" or even a "booo".

To start diagnosing this, of course, you're gonna want to take it for a road test. Once you do. The next thing you're gonna wanna do is get it up in the air so you have the wheels off the ground and just give them a little spin and see what you hear. There's a noise. The next thing you would do is remove the wheels so you can have a peek. Now, diagnosing brake noises can be a little bit tricky, but if it's like a high pitched squealing noise, as you're driving, typically it's gonna come down to a couple of different things.

Now, you're gonna have your little wear indicator. That should be on your inboard pad. No, this isn't the one for this car, but it's one that you can physically see. This area right along here, is called your wear indicator. You can see it kind of comes off a little bit and heads over towards where the pad is. Essentially, what that's supposed to do is let you know when the pads are worn too low. At approximately 2/32, it's a great time to go ahead and replace them before you're unsafe. And this is what's gonna let you know. So if you hear that squealing noise while you're driving, potential cause right here.

Other than that on your caliper brackets themselves, there's gonna be some tins that sit in between the pads and the brackets. A lot of times what happens on those, they're supposed to have like a little locking tab that holds them in place. But if the locking tabs are broken off or disformed in any way, and the thing can move around a little bit, the tin itself might hit up against the rotor and that's gonna cause a noise as well. Maybe you don't have that squealing noise. Maybe you've got a little bit more of like a, like a deeper groany type sound coming from one of your wheels or multiple wheels while you're driving down the road. If that's the case, a lot of times it comes down to the backing plate.

Now, the backing plate is supposed to protect the back side of the rotor from any debris making its way up inside there. But if something did make its way up inside there, like maybe you're doing a little bit of off-roading or doing something a little fun, maybe something kicked up inside there, like a rock of some sort or even a stick and that's causing like that noise. Or maybe you were doing some work on the front end here. You put the rotors on, you did everything you needed to do, but you kind of misplaced this backing plate a little bit. It's kind of a little bit disaligned, maybe it's bent in some way. You hit it with a hammer, give it a couple loving bonks and now it's hitting up against the rotor while you're driving. Or maybe you didn't pay any attention to that wear indicator. You don't mind the high pitched squeal and you kept driving because you wanna save a couple bucks.

At that point, this happened to your pad. You've only got metal riding directly on metal. And every time you go ahead and step on that brake, or even while you're driving, and this is hitting, you're gonna hear that noise. So now we're gonna talk about the noise, what typically happens while you're trying to brake. Now, this is something that's called a brake pulsation. Why would your brakes pulsate generally? It's you went ahead and you overheated them. How do you do that? You're trying to slow down and you're just riding those brakes. Essentially, you're keeping pressure on those brake pads right up against the rotor. The friction's creating heat and of course, heat is gonna make things expand and contract overall.

When that happens, you could end up finding out that you have a brake pulsation after you're trying to get off the highway on one of those long exits. So here's a good indicator of what some of those heat spots might look like. You can see that there's a lot of different areas on this braking surface that look a lot different than other areas. These are considered hard spots or hotspots. And every time that this rotor heats up, these are gonna kind of rise up a little bit. And you're gonna feel that in your brake pedal or even in your steering wheel, depending on if it's in the front or the rear or maybe you're doing something with your brakes and you accidentally gave it a couple bonks on the braking surface.

Diagnosing brake pulsations can be a little bit tricky, but overall, if, when you're stepping on the brake, you feel it in your steering wheel like this, it generally means that you're having an issue with your front brake rotors, whether they're warped a little bit from overheating, or maybe they're even damaged because you were working around this area and you gave it a loving bonk. But if you're driving down the road and you step on that brake pedal, and it doesn't really feel like steering wheel is shaking, but you definitely have like a shake coming through the passenger compartment, usually that's coming from the rear brakes.

Why would you have an issue with the rear brakes? Overall, it's because most of your braking is gonna come from the front. The rear is more for stability. So they're not really doing as much work. After the rotors have been sitting for a little while, you might get a little bit of a buildup on there or something alike that's on the braking surface. And once that's on there, it's kind of hard to get it off. Like I said, those rear brakes aren't squeezing necessarily as hard or as much as the front brakes. So it's less likely to have a brake pulsation coming from the rear rather than the front. Unless of course your vehicle's been sitting for a long period of time, it has some build up on that rear rotor, like I said, or maybe you have a mechanical issue back there, like maybe a slider sticking or even a brake piston.

Now, there's a lot of different things that I can go over that involve brakes, but I kind of wanna hear from you. So leave it in the comment section if you have any experience or maybe somebody gave you like a weird noise, like, eh, or anything, the like. Put it in the comment section. Let's get onto the next thing.

"Brrrr" is essentially the next noise that we're gonna talk about. And that comes down to a wheel bearing. The wheel bearings are gonna be located behind all four wheels behind your brake rotors. Now, if somebody comes at me with this noise and I'm trying to figure out what it is, they're saying, obviously what I'm kind of determining is they're kind of giving me a little bit of a humming noise. Humming usually comes from a wheel bearing, but I would wanna road test and diagnose the issue myself.

What I'm gonna do on this road test is just essentially see where or when the noise tends to happen. Does it happen when I'm rapidly accelerating or even maintaining a high speed? The noise seems like it gradually gets louder and then just stays as like a loud hum. Or maybe I'm driving down the road, I don't really hear very much. I start swaying to the left a little bit. I don't really hear too much noise. I go ahead and I turn it a little bit to the right, putting all the weight on that left side, bearing or loading that bearing, all of a sudden the noise gets louder. I start hearing the humming coming in through my left ear. That's telling me that the bearing that's loaded, which is the left side while I'm turning right, is more than likely the issue.

When I come back from the road test, the next thing that I wanna do is get all four wheels safely up and off the ground. Whether I'm using jack stands, trying to be as safe as possible or even lucky Len, I have a lift. What I'm gonna do while I have it up on lift though, is I'm just gonna go ahead and check that front end first. There's a lot of parts in the front end that you wanna check. You're gonna make sure you grab that wheel, 6 and 12. Give it a little wiggle like this. If you feel some movement, you don't necessarily know for sure it's a wheel bearing. It could potentially be a ball joint of some sort. You have a lower and upper in most cases.

When you're going side to side, once again, it could be a bearing issue, but might also be an inner and outer tire rod end issue. So you wanna make sure that you're paying attention to where the movement's coming from. But overall, if, when you're looking through the wheel and you're shaking that wheel a little bit, and you can see that brake rotor moving at the same time, but it doesn't look like the bracket's moving, there you go. More than likely that's the issue. It's the bearing.

Now, you can't always determine if a bearing's bad just by giving it a shake. Sometimes you're gonna hear that loud humming noise, even while the bearing doesn't necessarily have any movement. So you can check the whole front end. You can even make your way out to the back and have no movement from any of those wheels. You can't stop there. The next thing that you're gonna wanna do is try spinning each of these wheels, spin it as fast as you can by hand. See if you can feel some sort of vibration. You can even try to hold onto one of your coil springs if you had to.

If while holding that coil spring, you're spinning the wheel like this, and you can feel the "brrrr" coming through it, that's telling you that you have a bad bearing right there. A lot of times, people aren't gonna necessarily be able to spin their wheels fast enough and be able to hold onto something, to be able to tell if there's a vibration noise coming, especially if it's just a light vibration. So what you might be able to do is if you have a second person while the vehicle is up off the ground, any of the wheels that are powered by the engine and transmission need to be up off the ground for this entire circumstance.

Essentially, while they're off the ground, we're gonna go ahead and have the person inside of the vehicle go ahead and turn the key in the on-position. Push that traction control button off that way there, it doesn't really try skidding out on you or doing anything crazy from the ABS. And then we're gonna put it in drive. Go ahead and release that brake pedal and let the wheels start turning a little bit. More than likely the person that's down by each of the wheels here isn't necessarily gonna hear anything until the person up inside vehicle starts revving it up a little bit.

We just kinda wanna bring the speedometer up to maybe 30 miles an hour. You don't need to go ahead and jam on it until it goes up to 125 and the vehicle feels like it's shaking off of the jack stands or even the lift itself. Essentially, all we wanna do is just have somebody underneath there while it's revving and the wheels are spinning. Very carefully, use a stethoscope, or even if you had to, a pry bar. Hold it right up against where the knuckle is near the bearing. And just see if you can hear a little bit of vibration noise coming from there. If it sounds like it's very faint, it's probably not the issue. You go over to another one. It sounds like it's a little bit louder, sounds like you're kind of getting on the right track here.

But something to pay attention to though is just because you find that this wheel bearing over here is bad, you go ahead and you replace it. Maybe you think that that's all you go ahead and you take it for a road test, I still hear a little bit of that. It's not as prominent anymore, but there is still a hum. What's going on? Multiple bearing issues. A few last things to think about when it comes to diagnosing a humming noise coming from your bearings. You might have noise transfer, essentially. If you've got a front wheel drive vehicle and you have noise is on the left side, you might even be able to hear it all the way over on the right side. That's because of the noise transfer that comes right through that transmission.

Other than that, if you have a rear wheel drive vehicle, you're probably gonna have a drive shaft that goes from the transmission all the way to the rear differential. On that drive shaft, if you have an extended bed or something the like, you might have a center carrier bearing in there. If that bearing's bad right there, you're still gonna have a humming noise, but generally that noise isn't really necessarily gonna change in exception of the speed of the vehicle that you're driving in.

The next sound that I want to talk about is people say, when they hop inside their car, they go ahead and try to crank it over and all they hear is "de-de-dee". And so on. And so on. It's really annoying, the car won't start. Come on. Unbelievable. That sound that you were hearing was the engine starting to try to turn over, but it was starving from something. Overall, the engine needs a couple basic things. It's gonna need some air. It's gonna need some fuel. It's gonna need compression. And of course, spark.

Overall, if your car isn't starting, that's thing that you're gonna need to diagnose. There's a whole diagnosis process that you can go for that, but that's gonna make this a really long video. For me personally, in this instance, this is actually gonna happen pretty much right after you happen to gas up. Commonly people like to go very low on their gas gauge there.

They're just gonna keep driving it because they don't wanna go hit up that gas pump and go ahead and pay the $5 a gallon or however much you're paying. They just keep waiting and waiting and waiting until they're pretty much sitting on E while the gasoline that's sitting inside of your tank is supposed to be able to cool down your fuel pump. If the fuel pump was to overheat because you were driving it for an extended period of time without being cooled, it could potentially get damaged on the inside. Generally when the fuel pump fails, it's gonna be after you just fill up your fuel tank.

All right, let's see. Go ahead and crank it. Okay. So why am I underneath the car bonking on the bottom side of the fuel tank? Well, because inside the fuel tank, you're gonna have your fuel pump. And what can happen is, is the pump motor on the inside of that fuel pump could potentially get damaged or even stuck in some way. So by giving it a couple loving bunks with a rubber mallet, so we're not gonna cause a spark, that might actually free it up.

If your car ends up starting after you've done this, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're in the clear because more than likely, there is still an issue with the fuel pump itself, but hopefully you'll be able to make it home so you can make a decision on how you're gonna fix it. Just to reiterate, there's a whole bunch of different ways that you need to be able to diagnose, to see why your engine isn't running. This is just one of the most common things that can potentially happen for this instance. Obviously, you're gonna wanna spend a little bit of time underneath the hood and make sure that you're getting spark to where you need to spark, you're getting plenty of air and of course, you're getting fuel up to the fuel reel where it needs to be.

Now, the next problem comes down to a power steering pump whine. What the heck is that noise? Why would your power steering pump whine? I'm sure you've saw my video on quit your whining. And it involves a power steering pump and the hydraulic system. We used this car. We did a little torture test because we wanted to see what was going on. Something's always going on with this car.

That was a really great video. If you haven't seen it, make sure you check it out. But overall, if your power steering system is low, you're gonna have air inside the hydraulic fluid. That air is gonna be getting tried and it gets circulated by your power steering pump and it's gonna cause a whole bunch of little air bubbles inside of the pump. That's gonna cause turbulence and the fins that are on the inside or the veins that are on the inside might start grinding into things that they shouldn't be doing.

So why might you have air inside your power steering system? Well, certain things can happen, where maybe you develop a leak. You're gonna have the power steering pump, you're gonna have some lines that lead from that pump down to your power steering rack. And then of course back again, and there might be other things included such as maybe a cooler of some sort, but in any of those joints or lines, there could be a leak. And if the fluid's leaking out, air needs to make its way in at the same time.

Once air makes its way into the hydraulic system, you're probably gonna start hearing that noise. If the noise just started and you happen to get underneath your hood and you check that power steering fluid, you noticed it was a little bit low, obviously, you'd wanna take a peek around and make sure you don't have any leaks. The next thing that I would wanna do is go ahead and bleed out the system, or even better than that, I would wanna flush out the system with the manufacturer's specified fluid. That's gonna help ensure that there's no contaminants inside the power steering system. And of course, make sure it's full of fresh fluid.

But if you've been driving around with it like this for a while, because you really don't mind the noise, you just don't have time to get around to it, you're a busy person, just like all the rest of us you've been driving like that, you could have potentially caused some serious damage to your power steering system, more specifically the pump itself. And if that's the case, now you have to replace the power steering pump. You need to make sure you flush out your entire power steering system, just in case there's any sort of debris in there. And then of course, like I said before, refill it with manufacturer's specified fluid.

Oh boy, stick with me here. I've got one more for you. This one's kind of more of like a noise. And when this happens, it's when a customer is putting down their window. There can be several causes for this noise. Of course, it's gonna have to do with your window going up and down. What could be making this noise? You have some window channels. There's some that are right out in the open that you can fairly easily see, and then there's gonna be others that are located inside the door down along the channel right here.

Also, you're gonna have a window regulator located inside here. That's gonna have a motor hooked up to it and essentially it's gonna kind of go like this. It's gonna have some pivot points and it's gonna make your window go up and down. If there is an issue with lubricity inside these channels or even on the window regulator itself, you could start hearing a little bit of a squeal noise, especially if there's some sort of debris clogging up the area. You might also have an issue where something just isn't lined up right. On this one in particular, the door panel's just hanging right off of here. That's no good.

The easiest fix for this of course would be to try to clean down the things that you can physically get to. The outside of this window is absolutely filthy. Could it potentially be hitting up against the seal and causing a little bit of a squeal? Of course, it could. Also inside these channels coming up along here, we wanna make sure that that's clean and free of all debris. If anything's inside there, once again, it could be binding up a little bit and causing that squeal.

After I get everything cleaned down or at least as much as I can see, I'm gonna go ahead and test it. If the noise goes away, good for me, if it doesn't just go ahead and tear off that door panel and have a look at what's going on inside. Okay friends, so now, you know what it's like when people try to talk to their mechanic. I get all sorts of weird noises coming at me and I have to try to diagnose and figure out what exactly they are.

Typically, I like to do the diagnosis of my own. I just kind of listen to what they're saying. I kind of get a little bit of a grasp and then I just kind of make my own way. If I have to take it for a road test, I take it for a road test and I can pinpoint where the issue is. I hope you like the video. I hope it helped you out. If you think it's something that can help somebody else go ahead and share it with them. That would mean everything to me.

Aside from that, if you like the video or love the video, go ahead and smash on that like button for me. It would mean the world. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe and ring the bell. That way they're you and all of your friends can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks. So I've got a quick short story for it. Quick, short story, but I kind of just like to have a starting point of where to start. Currently, it's not very easy to make a squeal. Okay, here we go. This is gonna be the time. This is the one. The next sound that I wanna talk to you about is maybe somebody goes ahead, goes ahead. I'll veer call.