I recently bought my 2008 GTC.

The car makes a noise while driving that could be road noise because of the tyres ( filed by the dealer with new Continental DWS which is great for South Florida....) or wheel bearings.

I have a guy that took care of my Maser saying it is the wheel bearings. I went to GT motorworks where Marcus who is a bentley trained technician tells me it is the sound of the tyres.

No idea what to do. Change the wheel bearings or the tyres?

Has anyone had a similar problem?

Best

S

 

Last year I switched to Yokohama 20 inch from Hankook 19 inch and immediately heard more road noise. If you put your car on a hoist (make sure you put it in "jacking mode") and spin the wheels, you will be able to differentiate bearing noise from tire noise. When you say you went to "Marcus", are you referring to Marcus Tuerk in Boca Raton? If 'yes', then I would go with his advice.

 

Many thanks for your reply.

Yep, Marcus Tuerk. What a nice and professional guy! A real pleasure to deal with.

But then I have two other guys telling me it is the wheel bearings, so even though I trust him and I am inclined to follow his advise I would hate to invest the required money one way or the other and not get the result I want.

Decisions, decisions.....

 

If in doubt, have someone you trust do a wheel bearing test as I described. If they are bad, you'll hear them. Of course, because the tires aren't touching, they can't make any tread noise. How many miles on your car?

 

20,000 miles. That is one of the reasons Marcus is saying it should not be the bearings (apart from driving it, checking temperature on discs etc.)

 

I would be amazed if it is a wheel bearing noise. Unless the car sat in one spot since 2008, or someone beat the car on the track, with only 20,000 miles, those bearings should be fine.

 

I changed to the Michelin Pilot Sport A/3 and achieved some reduction in tire noise and ride quality but I can still hear tire noise. My wife commented about hearing the road noise and thought such an expensive car should be more quiet than that. The sound I now hear is the rubber on the road and you can not get rid of all that. I do think the large foot print of rubber on these cars does cause some extra sound that can not be avoided.

I agree with others that you must rule out bearing issues but these large wide tires all way round do make sound.

 

Assuming you keep the same rolling diameter, the larger the wheel size, the louder the noise as, by necessity, you must decrease the profile of the tire. The lower the profile, the less sound absorption by the tire. This can be exacerbated by tread design and compound. As Dr.D states, these cars have a lot of rubber on the road.

 

My wife made a similar comment and furthermore stated when I said I would possibly trade up for a new one in a year: Are you mad???? That is about 4 times my X4 and does not even stream music via bluetooth. I replied: Look honey, I am not interested in driving an Ipad. You know the engine, the feeling the bespoken built, the .... Oh, just forget it! My only vice is cars. It could be a lot worse....

 

Are you married the the same woman I am? I did not need her comments and many times wish she would keep silent. I did a Fabspeed pipe and tune so that adds more exhaust sound that she also does not care for. Do I sound like i care much? This is my car and that is the bottom line.

Make sure your bearings are ok and then just make the rubber howl in the conners.

 

The main problem with our other halfs is that they do not understand the difference between the sweet sound of a true engine and what they perceive as noise.

My wife hated the Maserati (sweetest sound in the world), dislikes the California and does not want to ride with the roof down ever... but to be fair with her, she has been making every effort lately to enjoy with me the cars over the weekend. It is funny to see her fake but sweet smile pretending she enjoys riding with the wind and sun in her face. You have to love them.

 

Thanks for the post and read it to my wife. Color me a happy and lucky man.

PS: She loves the GTC with the roof down (weather permitting of course).

 

Well... We need to enjoy the weather of Fort Lauderdale before moving back home to London in 18 months. Boy I will miss this place! Perfect for a vert.

 

Lord have mercy they are twins. My wife gets car sick easily so I just leave her at the house on a top down sport ride. My 20 y/o daughter rides shotgun and loves to hear the motor roar, tires howl and music way up with the top down. She never even flinched while doing 165 mph with the top down.

 

Brag, brag, brag. Blah, blah, blah and on and on. My wife is so beautiful and perfect she can't be bothered with a hair out place or a bug between her teeth.

AND

She still remembers that time a crow tried to fly up from the road with me doing a buck ten and almost dropped a dead snake in the cabin on her side. It fell just in front of the grill. Little more throttle and she'd be wearing that snake.