Car loud like an airplane when driving, slowing down and stopping

The proper thing to have done was to go back right away and explain the new problem. After this long, there is no way to convince the people at the shop that the problem started there. Even if the problem did not show up right away, at least they will listen and look to see if it could be related to their work. They deserve the chance to correct their mistake.

If you can make the noise occur while the car is standing still, it is not a wheel bearing issue. An exhaust leak can get pretty loud, and there is always a flexible joint on front-wheel-drive cars to allow the engine to rock back and forth freely. That joint could open up just enough to be heard, and that would change between accelerating, cruising, and coasting.

If the transmission is not up-shifting properly, the engine will be running much too fast, and you will hear the excessive engine noise inside the car. The mechanic could have inadvertently bumped an electrical connector, or something like that. Forcing the car to run at highway speeds in the wrong gear will lead to serious engine damage.

The place to start is by having someone drive the car to identify the actual cause of the noise, then we can discuss the solutions.

I am using a new laptop that is a real pile. Among its numerous design flaws, it does not play sound from the internet.

If you can hear the noise while standing beside the car, it is not related to the transmission, so that is a big worry eliminated. I do not know that it is necessary to tow the car. The types of things I would be looking for include an exhaust pipe that got pushed on by the hoist, or even a rubber exhaust hanger that was real close to breaking anyway, and the hoist moving on it was the final blow. That can let the whole system hang a little lower, and that can open up the flexible joint I mentioned. The clue is the noise will get louder when you press the accelerator pedal to speed up the engine, and that will be worse if you do that while holding the brakes applied. If nothing else works out, have the car inspected at a tire and alignment shop. The people there are experts at finding the causes of noises and vibrations, as well as poor tire wear. Specific to this issue is the need to determine if you are hearing a noise that is not normal for this model, meaning something is wrong or broken, or if you're hearing a noise too easily that is otherwise characteristic for your model, meaning something is mispositioned or missing. Be aware too that exhaust parts are suspended on rubber hangers to isolate the noise and vibration from the passenger compartment. It does not take much to allow two metal parts of a bracket to rub against each other. You'd be amazed at how much noise that can produce that is not heard outside the car.

Given the age of the car, metal fatigue can also play a role in how quiet it is inside. Regular hoists raise the car by its designed-in lifting points, and those are different than when the tires and suspension system hold the car up. It is not unheard of for the body to flex to the point a door weatherstrip seal leaves a gap. That will allow you to hear road noise which can be very noticeable. The body will usually settle back to where it was, but sometimes not right away. Also, GM engines are well-known to be noisy, especially their four-cylinder engines. A lot of effort went into adding noise-deadening materials. If any of that becomes non-functional, you'll hear the same noise a lot of other drivers hear. That includes the rubber seal that runs along the bottom of the rear edge of the hood.

I have to add one comment of value. I taught over one hundred students in a community college automotive program. Three of my top people were girls, and the guys had a lot of respect for them. A real lot of men today are just as clueless about the machines they trust are going to get them back home, and when you talk with the service writers behind the customer counter, they do not know where you fit on that scale of automotive wisdom. Some of those service writers are washed-out mechanic wanted-to-be's, but could not make it. My last supervisor at school was a woman who was a former service manager at a new-car dealership, and she was real good at her job. Also, during my ten years working at a real nice family-owned Chrysler dealership, I got to attend a lot of their schools, and they used my classroom as one of their three remote training locations, so I got to sit in on those too after I started teaching. The head of all of Chrysler training for all of Wisconsin and part of Michigan was a woman, and her classes were some of the best I have ever attended. So, you are welcome to be a woman, but you cannot assume anything about anyone when it comes to cars today. What you need to work toward is finding a shop or mechanic you feel comfortable with, then build a relationship with them. Any shop is better able to address your concerns when they know the history of your car. We had a real lot of regular, repeat customers at the dealership, and I often saw the same cars over and over for all of their regular maintenance. We got to know what types of things the owners would want to be told about, and what we could safely ignore. We have about a dozen new-car dealers in my city with the same excellent reputation. There is only one Chevrolet dealer that is a well-known crook. We used to have one really bad independent shop owner, but he ran out of customers and is no longer in business.

Keep my informed as to your progress or if you need more words of wisdom!

Dandy. Tires usually make noise as a result of bad wear patterns caused by misalignment problems, but there are exceptions. I worked at a Sears Auto Center in the 1980's, and we also had tires that were not suitable for specific applications. For example, we had a really nice tire made by Armstrong, but they could not be used by mailmen who drove all day on granite roads. The granite tore up the tread and cut the life expectancy in half. We also had a couple of tire models designed to provide a real quiet ride, but they were expensive. There are always trade-offs between cost, quiet, tread life, traction, and comfort.

At any rate, happy to hear your issue is going to be solved. Come back and see us again when I can impart some more of my wondrous wisdom onto you.

Yeah. This does sound like you have a bearing noise. You are correct that this is not something that normally fails quickly. However, you will not want to go more than an a week or two because they are not going to get any better but again, you are okay drive it for now.

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/bearing-hub-replacement

This type of wheel bearing can't fall apart because they're held together with the outer CV joint. It's true, the noise won't get any better, but you can drive on a noisy bearing for years. Most people get tired of the noise and get them replaced much sooner.

There are some things worth mentioning if you plan on doing this yourself. The first is you can make your new bearing instantly noisy if you place any vehicle weight on it before the axle nut is tightened to specs with a click-type torque wrench. Some people set the tire on the ground to hold the axle from spinning while they tighten that nut, but by that time, the damage has been done. Instead, just stick a punch or screwdriver into a cooling slot of the rotor to hold the axle, then tighten the nut.

Very often the noise can sound like it's coming from a certain side, then due to transferring of the noise, it is actually the bearing on the other side that is noisy. A quick way to verify you found the right one is to jack the vehicle up with the tire off the ground and hanging by the suspension, reach over the top of the tire and lightly place your fingertips around part of the coil spring, rotate the wheel, and feel for the vibration in the spring.

If you do replace the wrong bearing, since it's a bolted-on design, the old one can be placed on the other side.

Be aware GM has had a real lot of trouble with the anti-lock wheel speed sensors pressed onto the back side of their bearings. They develop a real wimpy signal to start with, then, with as little as 15,000 miles, enough normal play develops to allow the sensor to move away from the toothed tone ring. That makes the signal even weaker. Since all signals generated this way become weaker as speed slows down, it is common for the signal to drop too low to be read by the computer. That makes it look like that wheel locked up at less than 10 - 20 mph. That results in "false activation" of the ABS system. The fix for that is another new bearing assembly. The dealers' scrap metal bins are full of these bearings.

If your car does not have anti-lock brakes, when you go shopping, look at the prices for bearings with the ABS speed sensor. Most of the time you'll find they cost less than the same bearing without the sensor. There's simply no place to plug the sensor in, so you can just let the connector hang loose.

Most GM front-wheel-drive cars used to call for 180 foot-pounds for the axle nut. Some vehicles, light trucks, for example, call for as much as 240 foot-pounds. Your year and model is listed as 159 foot-pounds.

Just saw your second reply. OEM is not always the best way to go. The aftermarket industry often does a real good job of addressing common failure items and making improvements to those designs. Ford steering and suspension parts are a perfect example. As I mentioned, these bearings had a well-known history of causing ABS problems in as little as 15,000 miles, so why would you want to buy another one from the same manufacturer? For sure you will never find one from the dealer with a lifetime warranty. There are some from aftermarket suppliers that do come with lifetime warranties. Given the high failure rate, if you have anti-lock brakes, that warranty is something to consider.

If nothing is badly rusted underneath, this job typically takes less than half an hour, and it does not require an alignment afterward. The bearing assembly used to cost around $150.00 - $200.00, but since it is such a high-demand and popular part, you're going to find them for a lot less now. One source even lists them for less than $30.00.

That does sound like a dealership issue, and it doesn't surprise me. I worked for a very nice family-owned Chrysler dealership all through the 1990's. We had an excellent reputation and the family members were very much liked. Also, we had a Pontiac / GMC dealer just down the road, a Ford dealer and a Cadillac dealer across town, and a really nice import dealership owner. We would all repair each other's trade-ins, we'd borrow service manuals back and forth, and we'd help each out when ever possible.

Also, at my dealership, the service writers had the owner's blessings to photocopy pages from service manuals for regular customers, as long as they had time, and we often borrowed out special tools. The one notable exception was the local Chevy dealer. GM already has more ways figured out how to separate you from your money after the sale, but this dealer had all kinds of additional policies in place to rip people off. One of them, for example, was a one-hour minimum labor charge per visit, including for warranty work. The least any manufacturer will pay for a warranty service is 0.2 hours. One of our future customers said they tried to get him to pay the additional 0.8 hours to replace a burned-out head light bulb that was under warranty. The repair took less than two minutes and was covered by GM, but the dealership owner wanted more.

We have an instructor who comes from 300 miles away once a month to put on very high-level classes for mechanics from independent repair shops in our area. He owns a business that specializes in diagnosing and repairing the one out of a hundred cars no one else can figure out, then they put a class together around similar problems. His main customers are other businesses. He networks with others like him, and many of the manufacturer's instructors who train the dealership mechanics around the country. They're all working together to improve the reputation of the industry. Among their discussions, one topic that comes up often is "customer-unfriendly business practices. Their consensus is the most customer-friendly manufacturers are Hyundai, Toyota, and Chrysler, in that order. The most customer-unfriendly include GM, BMW, VW, and Audi. They are more concerned with squeezing out every dollar possible, with no regard to building customer loyalty or goodwill, or growing future sales.

Related to that, there are still two salesmen at my dealership who have been there since the early 1980's and early 1990's, who never run out to the parking lot chasing prospective buyers. They both just sit in the showroom waiting for their repeat customers to come looking for them. I've sat with them while eating lunch, and watched first-hand as people came through the door asking for them. Contrast that to the newspaper ads for GM dealerships. They like to show photos of their salespeople, and with every ad, there's one or two missing and one or two new ones. They have a very high turnover when they don't produce.

GM salespeople are well-known for being extremely high-pressure. If you visit any import dealer, you'll find they are just the opposite.

As a point of interest, Dodge is outselling GM on trucks two to one in my state, and I just learned that GM's top selling model is 14th highest in sales. They advertise they are the largest seller because they have so many brands and models, but no one model is in the top ten. Ford is somewhere in the middle with customer-friendly business practices. You don't hear much about high-pressure salespeople, but since the mid 1970's, they suffer from the "bean-counter" syndrome. They look for any place they can save a penny, and that shows up in their very high failure rate and poor design of steering and suspension parts, especially on their front-wheel-drive cars. In spite of that, our local Ford dealer did have a loyal following, and few complaints.

We also had two very well-known disreputable independent repair shops in my city. Both went out of business due to lack of customers, but one of them is running a nation-wide franchise now. Funny thing is, that shop is almost always empty too. With all the unnecessary, unreliable technology on today's cars, there is more than enough work to keep everyone busy. There's no need to intentionally damage a customer's car or try to sell services that aren't needed. In fact, it can be hard to become a new customer at a reputable shop because they're booked up so far in advance.

I'm sorry you had such a miserable experience at your dealership. It is unlikely things will change there, and you can bet other people are sharing the same complaints. In my extended community of around 100,000 people, those who insist on buying a new Chevy go 30 or 35 miles to two different cities to buy them. I've had former students who were mechanics at the local Chevy dealership, and they all had to look for work at other shops because they were just standing around at the local one. Problem now is that crook has been buying up a lot of the other dealerships, and they're slowly developing the same poor reputation. This has really helped my old Chrysler dealership. They built a new facility this past summer, and they have three others in three different cities that are all new within the last five years. There's something to say about keeping their customers and their employees happy.

Hold on. The costs you listed are way too high. A wheel bearing for your car should cost between about $100.00 to $150.00, or even less. I can't remember if I made the comment here or on a different question, so forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but if your car does not have anti-lock brakes, where ever you get prices from, be sure to get them for bearings with and without the wheel speed sensor. Most of the time those with the sensor cost less than the same bearing without because they sell a lot more with it, so volume reduces the cost. Just let the pigtail connector hang if it isn't needed.

In my city and surrounding towns, Napa is by far the highest-priced auto parts chain. I've found O'Reiley's to usually be the lowest, but Advance Auto and Auto Zone are good too. You might want to look at the Rock Auto web site. I recently found an $80.00 steering part for a fellow for less than ten dollars, and it was from Moog, one of the world's best suppliers of steering and suspension parts. They build the majority of original equipment parts for the car manufacturers.

You're going to find the price you listed for anti-sway bar links is also way too high. I couldn't blame you for being crabby with the prices you were quoted.

That sounds better. Keep us updated on your progress.

If you holler really loud, I might hear you. I'm in Wisconsin.

If you end up in Green Bay, I'm 90 miles straight west. There's a cloud a half mile south of my house. That's how I tell people how to find me.