IntegraR0064

OK, so I've got a very intermittent issue where I hear continuous clicking/ticking as I drive that sounds like it's coming from the wheels (all 4 of them). Here's what I figured out:

1) It does not happen when I first start driving. Driving to work, however, does make it happen usually by the time I get there. Work is about 8-10 miles away on a back road. If I let it cool down/sit it will go away again.

2) I don't hear it when I'm going faster, it's only when I slow down to 0-10 mph or so that I hear it.

3) It gets faster with faster vehicle speed (not engine speed)

4) It's a few clicks per wheel revolution, but it's not necessarily consistent

5) It gets worse (louder) when I'm turning far to the right - like over one full steering wheel turn to the right. It gets better when I turn far to the left. The magnitude of how much I have to turn varies with the severity.

6) I don't seem to have any other symptoms, although there's a very quiet hum I get sometimes at high speed that I'm not sure I had before or not.

7) If the car is jacked up and I spin the wheel I don't hear anything, even if I jack it up really quickly after just hearing the sound as I pulled in the garage.

The car is an autocross car, although it's pretty new to me so it's only been to maybe 4 autocrosses. It's got 26k miles. It's a 2006. It has J's offset camber ball joints, Penske 8300's with 700-800 lb springs and remote reservoirs, spherical bearing shock mounts, Gendron front bar with bearing mounts and heim joint endlinks, removed rear sway bar, 949 Racing 6ULR 17x9 +63 nonstaggered wheels, Hankook RS3's. Alignment is pretty extreme at 0 toe up front, 3.2 deg camber up front, 3/16" toe in rear, 2 deg camber rear, 7 deg caster front.

One thing that happened pretty recently is that I had a supreme idiot moment. While my car was sitting with the tires on cinder blocks I decided it was a good idea to unchock the wheels and roll the car back and forth to try to settle the suspension. Well... I rolled the car slightly too far and it just barely rolled forwards off the blocks. It didn't seem too bad - a cinder block is 8" high, which isn't super high, and I was pulling on the car with all my might the opposite direction so it kind of rolled down as opposed to, like, flying off the blocks. Plus the brunt of the impact, particularly in front, was on the jack point landing on the cinder block and breaking through it. So I would think the impact on the actual wheel/tire/suspension would have been significantly lessened by the jack point taking the brunt of the impact. I drove it around afterwards and everything seemed fine, and visually everything looks OK. I think a few days before the last autocross we heard a very quiet version of this clicking with barely audible clicking, but I forget exactly when that was. We definitely autocrossed at least once or twice since then with no symptoms.

I've checked to make sure everything is tight, and I've checked the splash shields because I thought maybe pebbles were stuck in them. I jacked up the car and tugged on the wheel and I didn't notice visible play. I'm about to check the brakes - anything in there that could cause this? I'm also thinking it could be the wheel bearings? I'm also going to tighten the rear spindle nut, but that can't be causing the sounds from the front - could it? Should I do the grease spindle nut and tighten in the front too?

Is there any way to test if the wheel bearings are doing it without replacing them?

OK, sorry for the super long post and thanks for any help

TopGear

Your symptoms sound like textbook beginning of a bad wheel bearing. (Only doing the noise when hot, and getting louder/quiter depending which way you're turning)

Any change in noise if you apply the brakes? If you can rule the brakes out, it's a very good bet it's the wheel bearing.

EDIT: Wait, all 4 wheels? You sure about that? I overlooked that part... I've never heard of all 4 wheel bearings going out at once. That would be almost impossible. Don't know what else it might be though. I'll let somebody else take a stab at this.

IntegraR0064

Well I was thinking maybe the fact that the car dropped off the blocks damaged all 4 of them a little, then with a couple autocrosses it fatigued them a bit more

IntegraR0064

Oh, and I don't think there is a change in noise if I apply brakes. Does that definitely mean it's not the brakes you think?

BTW, thanks for the help.

IntegraR0064

I should mention too, it's not like all 4 wheels are clicking simulataneously. They'll start clicking at about the same time, but the actual individual clicks aren't synchronized. And some are worse than others - for example the front left is definitely the worst.

robrob

Do you know if the axle nuts have been torqued to the higher 242 lb-ft? If not that may help quiet them, at least for a while. You can start with the rear, it's easy to remove wheel centercap, unstake 36mm nut, remove with big impact wrench, put a little motor oil on the face of the nut--not the threads, and torque to 242 lb-ft. Drive and see if that wheel is quiet.
More info on the wheel bearings is here:
http://robrobinette.com/S2000Bearing.htm

IntegraR0064

I haven't retorqued them, I'm going to do that tomorrow morning.

So I just took the car for a drive and noted some things:

-Cooler ambient temperature makes it so it takes longer to make clicking happen. This time I had to drive back and forth to and from work, with extra braking on the way back.

-Turning right makes the left wheels click more while the load's transferring and makes the right wheels not click

-Turning left makes the right wheels click more while the load's transferring and makes the left wheels not click

-I think only one wheel on the right is clicking, can't tell if it's front or rear, I'll need a helper to determine that

-Both wheels on the left are clicking, although the one in the front is far worse

-Braking lightly does not change the clicking at all

-Braking hard makes the front wheels click more, but this makes sense since I'm transferring load to the front

Based on all that, I will try tightening the spindle nuts and checking over brakes, but it's looking very likely it's actually the wheel bearings.

Hodri

I seem to have a similar issue - I get the clicking noise from all 4 wheels too (not simultaneously, just as you described).

It really drives me crazy! Somehow I believe it has to do with the wheels (non-staggered) itself. After I retorqued the lug nuts, the noise did go away on the driver side wheels. But I cannot get it away on the other side. Since yesterday I drive with hub center rings, which I didn't had before - but no change on the noise!

Did you find a solution?

IntegraR0064

Sorry I meant to reply to this but forgot!


I'm not sure if I found exactly what the solution is, but I've fixed it and in doing so I think I've narrowed it down quite a bit.

First I checked the brakes. They were great, nothing wrong with them. Also checked the lug nuts, they were torqued.

So I replaced all four hubs and wheel bearings. This was on June 30th. As part of that I greased the axle splines, and torqued the (new) axle nuts to the new spec. There wasn't anything physically obviously wrong with anything, but it would be hard to tell if it was the bearings.

Then I raised my coilover perches slightly since I had meant to do that and now needed an alignment anyway so it was a good time. My alignment at this point was way off since I had forgotten to mark my alignment bolts before taking them off. I drove to my alignment shop, which is 1/2 hour away. By the time I was close to the shop, I started getting clicking. Not bad...definitely far quieter than clicking I had before doing this, but definitely there too. I had them align the car. My toe was waaaaay off (again I expected this, it was not this way before I changed the bearings). Drove back home. Again I had clicking after 20 minutes, but now it was extremely quiet.

However, since then? To my knowledge, I've had no clicking. So something I did fixed it (I'm guessing the wheel bearings), but maybe it took a little bit for it to settle into not clicking, or something like that. Possibly my ridiculous amounts of rear toe were putting stress on the bearings and making them continue to click. I don't know. But it's gone for now and has been for a couple months.

Hope that helps. If it comes back I'll post an update. If you get it to go away, please post what you did as well. Hopefully we'll narrow it down.

Hodri

Thanks for the reply, appreciate it

On my side, I think I've really narrowed it down to the wheels causing the noise. I'm on matt black CE28N 17x9 non-staggered on 255/40 R888.

I have temporarily put on a second set of 18x8 + 18x9 OZ Ultraleggera's and experienced no clicking noises at all. So I'm pretty sure now it's the wheels (about 99% sure as I didn't had them put on for long and it was a bit colder on the temperature side too).

When I closely inspected the CE28Ns - I discovered that the black coating is getting chipped off (partially) on the spots where the lugs are torqued to the wheel.
I believe that the noise is really caused by the lugs which are not tightly/evenly pressing on the wheel because the coating is irregularly chipped.

I think I'll have to sand the paint off to create blank spots. I'll have to try that when I get the time and report back...