I had a flat tire (front driver side) last week, Tuesday, and I got it replaced. Before I had it replaced, I had them use one of my used tires back in my shed and I didn't notice any sounds or anything. Now that I have the new tire on, I've noticed that I have a "womp.....womp.... womp" sound as I drive, but you can only hear it around 55-60 mph, anything below or above those speeds you don't hear it at all. There's no play in the steering wheel but I've noticed that there's like a slight vibration on the floorboard coherent with the sound, it's not violent. The sound is only on the driver side of the car. It's not loud, but it's noticeable to me at least.. you know how we hear everything that goes on with our cars.

So I had one of my friends sit in the car with me and see if she can hear the noise too, cause I may be tripping and it just be excessive road noise. She claims she doesn't hear anything abnormal. The reason why I asked her is cause she helped me out with my wheel bearings being worn, she definitely heard them from the rear of the car when I test drove it with her.

Wheel bearing? I don't think so cause when I'm driving, it's not consistent and it doesn't get louder as my speed increases.

So far I've done the following:
-Checked my lug nuts cause I thought they were loose and they actually were! So I torqued them down to 85 ft/lbs and the sound is still there.
-Checked my tire pressure and noticed that the shop put 40 psi in the new tires while the other tires were at 33-35. I put all tires to 35 psi. Sound is still there.
-Took it back to the shop that did the work and told them about the lug nuts and sound. I was thinking the wheel was improperly balanced, which it was, so they re-balanced it and torqued it down to 85 ft/lbs (I checked when I got home). Sound is still there.
-So the next thing I did was swap tires around, (left --> right, left <-- right) to see if the sound would travel to the front passenger side, before I did the swap I grabbed the wheels to see if there were any play in it as well, wheel bearing check and nothing, solid (I have a staggered setup). The sound is still there.

Now my struts are worn, I have a replacement pair with lowering springs but I'm waiting on a few other things to come in the mail before I start installing everything, you know do it all at once, but do struts cause noises like that?

The car does pull to the left a little, but it's not like crazy to where I'm fighting it to keep myself on the road. So I know I need my alignment checked, but I wasn't gonna do that until I get my struts and springs installed and let them settle, steering wheel itself is straight as an arrow.

The only thing that I can think of is the new tire is defective. The only way I can rule that out is if I go and get my old tire mounted again and test for sounds.

 

Take a close look at the tread surface of your tires. If there's a flat spot (even a small area where the tread is worn down) on the tire, that could manifest the type of sound and slight vibration you've picked up.

 

But it doesn't make any sense that the sound was there when I used my older tires, from my last set, and the sound wasn't even there. The only reason I didn't run the tire for long because the shop had to order my tire, 245/35/19, and my last set were directional tires and this set is asymmetrical.

It's my daily btw, 113k miles so far. I haven't even had the tires a full year yet, probably about 4-5 months and then it'll be a year.

245/35/19 Front - 275/35/19 Rear
Old set - BF Goodrich G-Force Comp 2 A/S (Loud as hell when they got worn down)
New set - Continental Extreme Contact DWS 06 (Quiet with nice grip)

 

Any other ideas to my issue? Anything would help, maybe I'm overlooking something.

 

One other thought is whether your wheels are remaining properly torqued when driving. We've had Z car pilots using the wrong lug nuts to secure wheels that have different lug seats. The results are that the wheels consistently come loose. This has happened with 370Z wheels being used and is obviously a serious safety issue.

 

Concur, but mine were not due to “improper” lug nuts, per se, was more due to my not having enough thread (only about 7 complete turns) due to my trying out a set of 10mm slip in spacers. Ehhhhhh, not s’good.

Moral of my story is if you have to use spacers (which I have to in order to run all if my Z34 wheels on Z33), use bolt ons, not slip ons UNLESS running extended studs - the better solution.

But ya, check lug torque if you haven’t already. Highly possible.

 

Here's an update to what I've been doing so far to hunt for this problem:

-I went to another shop, in another city it was like 20-30 mins drive, that actually had a force impact machine to check my balance of my front tires. The guy there told me that my passenger side wheel was off by 1oz so that was a lot! The driver side wheel wasn't off but the rim is bent, but not too bad to where it should make noise or feel it in my steering wheel. Got all that done for $30 and the problem is still there.
-I got up under my car again to double check if anything was loose, and I still don't see anything out of the ordinary. Everything seems tight, bushings don't look bad, etc.
-I found a long stretch of road about 2 days ago, late night, and literately drove at 50-60 mph, swerving left and right for the wheel bearing check, and still nothing. The sound is still there doing both turns. Once I go about 75 mph, the sound is gone.

Now yesterday when I was going to a shop, asking for a price quote for a wheel alignment, the sound wasn't there at all. I've also noticed that too that it does come and goes, so I don't know what that's about.

So the only thing that I can think of is that my struts are severely worn out and it's to the point that it's making excessive road/vibration noise at a certain speed. I know the struts are worn because it has a floating feel and when I pass semi-trucks you can feel the car not being stable by their draft, you know that strong wind feel. I was looking at the struts when I had my tires off to inspect them and I've noticed that they look like some cheap struts, I don't even know what brand they are but they're definitely not OE. So who ever had the car before me went cheap on struts. Or, I did a little more research on tires and them having a shift belt, but that can't be the case because I don't feel any shaking/abnormal vibration in the steering wheel.

I have new struts and new springs, Whiteline springs at that to lower the car 1 inch around. I just haven't had time to install them since it's been raining randomly lately.

Just to recap, the steering wheel doesn't shake at all when I'm doing 50-60 mph, the sound is only present at 50-60 mph, anything lower than that it's fine, I switched the tires around to see if the sound travels and it's still there, car drives as normal except for the floaty feel from the bad struts and the sound isn't present at 75 mph.

Thanks for the comment and suggestions, that's the first thing that I thought of when I got a new tire cause the last shop I went to didn't even torque my lug nuts. It's not my lug nuts because I have them all torqued to 85 ft/lbs. The lug nuts thread on as they should, has plenty of threads to grab on to. I even double checked my tire pressure, all are at 35-36 psi.

 

Just occurred to me that I made the following suggestion to someone else, similar problem (but haven’t heard if it worked).

Since you are doing the shocks, make sure you check the fitness of the upper mounts. Had this problem on one of my old cars and turned out the rubber isolators had cracked/split allowing shock to bounce even though it appeared tight at the top.

 

I bought everything new when I purchased my springs. I got new top mounts with new bearing and bellow housing so everything is literately new on the new struts and springs. The only thing that I didn't get is the little insulator for the bottom of the spring, I didn't even know that there was one for it until the guy that put my struts together pointed it out before assembling them together. He told me that it wouldn't make a big deal though and I probably wouldn't hear the noise either.

I looked on other folks setups, did a Google search, and noticed that a lot of folks didn't have the bottom insulator either. I don't even think I've even seen them on coilovers either. Also, I checked on RockAuto.com and they didn't even sell that part so..

But yeah.. hopefully I get the struts down this weekend and see how that goes. Also, should I get an alignment right after I do my struts? Or should I wait a week and let them settle down and then get an alignment?

 

It's better to get an alignment done right away. Just driving to the shop is plenty of time to let dampers "settle down" and get an accurate four wheel alignment.

 

This. ^^^

The bottom insulator is a good thing to have, just from a NVH perspective. The more you can insulate, the better.

Let us know how it turns out after you swap out your shocks.

 

Ok cool, I got an alignment right after my install and they told me I have a 2 year warranty so that's good.

So I got around to installing my struts, went to the shop and got an alignment, I didn't get a chance to get up to speed at due to traffic and raining so I took some back-roads home.

So I got up early in the morning, took a drive to see if the noise is there and guess what? It is! So I took it to my mechanic to get another opinion and I told him exactly what I mentioned here and he even drove the car.

We're in the car and I told him the symptoms before we pull off. We go on a recently paved road to see if he can replicate the noise. He got it up to speed, 50-55mph, and he definitely heard it. As the sound was present, I started saying that "I don't think it could be a wheel bearing cause it would've been stupid loud in the car" He said "Naw it's not that because we would've heard it at a lower speed instantly" and I agreed with him because my rear wheel bearings were shot last year and that noise was mad annoying. He said that it sounds like tire noise. I told him that I had a flat tire on the driver side and ever since I got the new tire I hear that noise. He said that it's probably because the new tire isn't making any noise because, well it's new, and what I'm hearing is the older tire, it is about 9-10 months old tire. Lol. He told me that I wouldn't even worry about it cause the steering wheel isn't shaking, my suspension looks good, and the car drives fine.

Also, not having that insulator on the bottom I don't even hear any cracks or creaking noise so I think I'm ok with that.

So far the car feels a lot better with the new struts and springs, definitely feels more planted. I'm so glad I got this done. Now my next thing to do with the car is transmission and rear differential fluid changes and test pipes, I know I'm going to have fun with those. Sike!