Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kevin Wood]

  Could it be a tyre related problem?
Keith B

The tyres are in good condition and although they are cheap tyres there is no reason to suspect they are the cause of the noise which started suddenly, like flicking a switch. I drove two miles to drop off my daughter, on the way there was no hum, I turned around to come home and the hum began on the return journey.

Worth swapping the wheels front to back just to eliminate it, IMHO.

[Alex W]

Good idea. I'll do that.

[Stemo]

Whine coming from the rear? Check the obvious.

[Alex W]

Whine coming from the rear? Check the obvious.

If there is anything 'obvious' that has not already been mentioned in this thread please feel free to enlighten us, thanks.

[Stemo]

Whine coming from the rear? Check the obvious.

If there is anything 'obvious' that has not already been mentioned in this thread please feel free to enlighten us, thanks.

Wife in the back seat.

[Dodge]

Hi Alex, I had the same problem on my last Omega and I'm sorry to say I never got to the bottom of the problem even after trying everything that has been suggested on here.
In the end I put a piece of thick foam behind the rear seat and that muffled it a bit. After that I just turned the radio up! 
I would say live with it if you can as I spent a fair bit of money and time on it until a very nice chappie on the M56 went into the back of me doing 90mph (I was doing 70!)
He was eating a sandwich and trying to change a CD at the same time but it solved my problem!

[Alex W]

Been sick for a while hence the delay in reporting back.

Took the car to my friendly tyre centre to have the tyres examined and a front/rear swap.

They had a good look and pointed out that the rear tyres, although a budget brand,are practically new and that the fronts are more worn than the back with evidence of under-inflation wear to the outer edges. They said they thought it very unlikely that the rear tyres were the cause of my hum and that placing the, more worn out, front tyres on the back would probably lead to noise of its own. They were happy to swap them round for me but recommended I leave them where they are, which I did.

Looks like the oil change next. I'll report the outcome in due course just in case anyone else has a similar problem and is interested to know if it helps.

[firemoth]

Please do, I suspect I have a rear nearside bearing that's noisy (can't feel play - yet). It acts like a bearing ie gets noisier when turning right, and noise increases with speed, can be heard from about 40mph. It's not that loud as passengers don't notice it. But I was puzzled when someone previously mentioned (on this thread) that diff whine can get worse with corning. I've never had a rwd before so don't know much about servicing requirements of prop shaft / diff etc, so yeah please post updates

[Alex W]

Finally got round to changing the diff oil (i'm not in the best of health). When I got underneath I noticed that there is oil covering the forward end of the diff.

I assume that there is some kind of oil seal  between the diff and the prop shaft and that it has failed. Still plenty of oil in the diff as is came running out when I loosened the filler plug, and it looked fairly clean. Diff is making a loud humming noise over 30 miles an hour, sound stops briefly on a left hand bend.

I am thinking of scrapping the car in view of its age and some other faults but I wonder if anyone can give me an idea of the labour costs a garage might charge to change the diff for a secondhand one (£50 to £80 on Fleabay), which presumably would also require new oil seals in the process.

Thanks for any help.

[Alex W]

Just read Diff Pinion Oil Seal Change in Maintenance - its beyond me I think

[Kevin Wood]

Diff pinion leak is very common, and not really a problem unless it requires very frequent topping up. The seal can be changed easily enough.

Might well be worth checking the rear wheel bearings, though. Either way, not worth scrapping the car over, IMHO.

[Alex W]

Does a dodgy Diff Pinion Oil seal generate noise like I have described? Is it possible/likely that the diff itself is OK?

[Nick W]

Does a dodgy Diff Pinion Oil seal generate noise like I have described? Is it possible/likely that the diff itself is OK?

My diff was pretty messy from the moment I bought the car 4 years ago.
Back in the summer, I topped up the diff whilst I had the car jacked up to change the shocks. Actually, I topped it up with a litre of oil, so it must have been almost empty!


I hadn't considered the car to be particularly noisy before, but it was much quieter after!

[Alex W]

Thanks Nick, but as I've said above there's plenty of oil left in the diff and its quite clean. So, my question was, can a dodgy diff pinion oil seal generate significant noise in the cabin or is the sound most likely because the diff is also knackered?

[Entwood]

I had a leak from the pinion seal .. and the preload nut was not tight either !  The seal was replaced and the pre-load "guessed" at by the calibrated arm of an OOF expert (NOTE ... NOT me !!) ... a couple of years and around 25000 miles later I had a really weird "droning/scraping" noise within the cabin that steadily got worse .. initially diagnosed by another OOF expert as possibly a rear wheel bearing although it sounded "wrong" for that. Bearing changed, no change to noise.

Diff replaced with a known good used unit ... instant peace !!!  and with all the gubbins off the diff you could feel the roughness by rotating the input shaft.

The only indication, initially, was an oil seep from the bearing ... 


If bored .. the saga is here ...

http://www.omegaowners.com/forum/index.php?topic=102254.0