Horrible Grinding / Rubbing At Rear Of Car...

[spoolenturbo]

[b]Hello Everyone-

Seems we all are noise engineer's when it comes to the Azera huh?
At first I thought, wow am I expecting to much from this car? Well I sure am especially with 24k miles on our 2006 Ultimate which now makes an AWEFUL noise from the rear of the car...

[b]The sound is LOUD at 10-25mph then fades away to zero at 55+ mph. And has a tone of tapping, raspy grinding, and rubbing with the "Whump" of the tire rotation. Meaning the sound has the tire rotation sound of "whummmp-whump-whiiimp" mixed with the other sounds. It changes when the speed of the car changes. What I initially thought was, we had a bad wheel bearing or brake pads. Well I inspected all brakes and they are fine. Brakes stop perfect, yet the sound quites down slightly under breaking...
So with that find of quieting down under slight breaking between 10-20mph. There is something wrong with the left rear braking system. I took a trip in the TRUNK with my wife driving to find the **** problem. Okay I have really narrowed it down now...
The E-Brake is connected to small drum brakes inside the rear disc rotors (which expand and hold the car when you press down the e-brake pedal). Exact same type of setup as my 1998 Volvo S90 (which never has problems).
So I drove the Azera at 15mph (when the noise is at the loudest point) and applied the parking brake lever down fairly hard............... OH MAN...... The sound went away 100%. It's the drum brake pads inside the driver rear disc that's got a problem!!!

So I will take it back to the dealer and have the service writer put what I found. I hate it when you explain the problem to a 'T' and then they write, "customer states there is a noise coming from rear of vehicle." ...OH MAN... I go nuts, and tell them to write down what I actually said to help the darn techs!

Okay enough ranting & raving, I will keep you all posted on how we fix the issue completly.

*ANYONE else with this issue please post!!*

[Brazzel]

Hmmmmmm. Mine was making a noise kinda like you say when I turn right out of my driveway. I would curve it back and forth a few times and it would seem to go away. It would only make the sound at low speed while turning right and comes from right rear. Have not looked into it and it's in the shop getting fixed after I drove it off a mountain. Will have to see what I have after I get it back. I was kinda thinking a bearing also and mine only has 12,000 miles on it. Keep us posted on what you find.

[mahout]

I had a good laugh over your account of the service writer 'condensing' your statement. The most frequent complaint about service writers is their inability to provide as much info as possible about customer complaints and the reason for the car coming in. Worse, most tech training insists the SW only write the basic info. every SW we hired from a big car company had to be retrained to listen and write it all down. And for the tech to go talk to the owner when he starts if the job is not clear (change brake pads, change oil, etc). It always insured we wasted as little time as possible in the getting the job done right the first time.
Now that said, understand that tSW's don't always get good info from customers. That whirring noise might be passing a picket fence as easily as a frayed fan belt.
It makes a funny noise when it starts up. It won't start like it used to so it must be a bad battery for you to change. (it was a pugged fuel filter).
We wait eagerly to see what the repair actually was. I hope it is just an emergency brake adjustment.