Vauxhall Vectra B facelift (1999 - 2002) - 00 1.8 rumble noise, differential?

Honest John Back Room » Technical matters
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Wed 1 Apr 2009 19:03
00 1.8 rumble noise, differential? - sails north
hi, i think this is one those problems left over from the bad weather at the beginning of the year. basically im getting a rumble/roar on acceleration and a chaffing noise on deceleration. both noises are amplified by having the windows closed. the noise nearly disappears if both front windows are open during the day. when you can hear it the noise sounds bad, very bad

the rumbling roar on acceleration only happens in gear (all gears and all speeds), rolling down a steep hill in neutral doesnt recreate the noise. the sound is like what i'd imagine a totally broken bearing to sound like, with balls, outer and inner races crunching togather. the rumble is gone with clutch dipped and in neutral

the other noise is a chaffing and only notice-able in deceleration. sounds like chaf, chaf, chaf, like a brake disc may when distorted at one part of its revolution. this noise is not always notice-able and becomes very faint when not in gear but you can still hear it very faintly.

during the bad weather, i had the misfortune of being stuck facing uphill on an iced street a few times. i must have had one wheel spinning for at least 5 mins in total during that particular week. also at another location i couldnt get on to a pavement (parking space is a tarmaced extention of the pavement) . a couple of times the vehicle just couldnt mount the kerb and would just slide on ice along the kerb after the initial bump. to top it off people had cleared the pavement and dumped the snow onto the parking spaces , so car could have driven over these mounds of snow once it did get on. im not 100% sure whether these incidents caused the fault but after leaving the car parked for three days during rest of the bad weather, i instantly noticed the appearance of these noises. it has been getting slowly worse since.

do you think its the diff? is there any tests i can do to pin point whether its ring and pinion or bearings?

thanks

Edited by sails north on 01/04/2009 at 19:07

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