Road noise

[Rupert]

2013 Lacrosse has the loudest road noise I have experienced. Not tires or wheel bearings or anything malfunctioning. Is there a way to dampen the noise?

 

[MelsRegal]

2013 Lacrosse has the loudest road noise I have experienced. Not tires or wheel bearings or anything malfunctioning. Is there a way to dampen the noise?

How old are the tires?
Do you have tire pressure set to the cold numbers listed on door pillar?
Without actually hearing it hard to advise other than have a shop check the car.

 

[Rupert]

How old are the tires?
Do you have tire pressure set to the cold numbers listed on door pillar?
Without actually hearing it hard to advise other than have a shop check the car.

I have owned the car for 2 years. Tires were new then. They have about 20,000 miles now. The noise is the same, seems louder now but I suspect I am just more focused on it now. Shop has checked car for issues and pronounced it without issue. Tire pressures have been adjusted from 33# to 36# and driven many miles at both levels. Road noise or suspension noise or whatever is continuous regardless of tire pressures. It increases with road speed.

 

[MelsRegal]

I have owned the car for 2 years. Tires were new then. They have about 20,000 miles now. The noise is the same, seems louder now but I suspect I am just more focused on it now. Shop has checked car for issues and pronounced it without issue. Tire pressures have been adjusted from 33# to 36# and driven many miles at both levels. Road noise or suspension noise or whatever is continuous regardless of tire pressures. It increases with road speed.

Has someone from the shop driven the vehicle with you.

 

[Rupert]

No. Admittedly I am confident in my diagnosis. This is not a transmission problem, or a bearing issue, or tire noise. I was hoping to get confirmation from others that this is a common issue that many other people experienced with their 2013 Lacrosse model car.

 

[richardnewton]

Funny we found the LaCrosse to be very quiet with three exceptions:

1. Rear bearing was going out. This is rather common with these cars.

2. Rear caliper was going out (I think it was dragging from time to time and warped the caliper. This was difficult to diagnose.

3. After purchasing mid-tier tires with lower profile. We have the 2.4 hybrid so the original wheels were small with high profile Michelin tires.

 

[Rupert]

Reluctant to think wheel bearing as it has been there since I bought the car two years and 20,000 miles ago. Maybe I will rethink this.

 

[EDSELRANGER]

Both times I noticed my '15 LaCrosse starting to make more road noise than usual, the culprit was one or more wheel bearing (hubs) going bad. They don't last as long as they should.

The first time, I was able to diagnose the issue by jacking up the car and spinning each wheel individually.
The last time, there no evidence (noise/grinding) of a bad bearing with the weight off of the wheels. Even the dealership said the bearings were fine. They drove the car and told me the noise was probably caused by uneven tire wear.

I wrestled a new set of SKF rear hub/bearings on last time the weather was good enough for driveway work. Noise is gone.

 

[Rupert]

I previously ruled out bad bearings because I have had the noise for so many miles. Surely bad bearings would have failed over 20,000+ miles. Also no sound changes when turning or on exit ramp circles. Now I am reconsidering.

Thanks

 

[richardnewton]

I found different speeds and different roads help diagnose these problems. Freshly paved highways can be really helpful (the change in sound and the silence). The left lane and right lane are tilted to the left and right for drainage purposes so that might help (as do up and down hills, turns left and right, acceleration, gliding, gliding in neutral, braking, etc. Do these testing on roads with no traffic for safety.

You might put someone in the front seat then the back seat to see if they can identify where the sound is coming from.

Could be something else entirely, like a defective or worn tire, tire balance, wheel issue, alignment. Inexpensive tires can go in less than 20k miles. If the tires are say 10 years old the rubber gets pretty hard. Or maybe some brakes / suspension issue, etc.

I will say the rear-driver's side caliper pistons on these cars are not the greatest. On our 2013 LaCrosse 2.4 (car only has 50k miles and rear calipers were replaced TWICE). First replacement was at the dealer. We live in a salty area and the car gets a lot of city miles so those are factors.

 

[PulpFriction]

No. Admittedly I am confident in my diagnosis. This is not a transmission problem, or a bearing issue, or tire noise. I was hoping to get confirmation from others that this is a common issue that many other people experienced with their 2013 Lacrosse model car.

I appreciate your confidence that it’s not the tires, but you bought the car used with new tires, so you have no benchmark really. New tires on a car that’s going to be sold are often inexpensive, and those can be horribly noisy. What tires does it have exactly?

Also, prior body repairs can leave noise pathways. Any prior crashes?

My 2010 runs Pirelli P7 all-seasons and is exceptionally quiet unless running on very rough pavement. But I did need improve on a prior body repair to achieve that. Also the car is noisier from truck noise when the rear seat backs are folded down.

 

[Rupert]

The tires are Michelin Cross Climate II. Thought for the first year or so they were the culprits for the noise. Still do for the most part. But several others who own these tires say no. Anyway, I have an appointment for the shop to road test and check the bearings and whatever else they feel appropriate. I will report back in a couple of weeks.

Again, thanks for all the commentary and suggestions.

 

[PulpFriction]

I have read complaints about Xclimate road noise. This is a really nice car but the cabin noise seems to increase with age (as with most cars,) probably because the noise suppressing goo gets hard.


Thinking about seeing what Ziebart can do about it, or just slapping in a bunch of noise-suppressing stick-on stuff and maybe some added door gasketing.

 

[RD_Atlanta]

I agree that I wouldn't disregard the other members suggestion that tires might be what you're hearing. There probably is enough chatter about this on the web that there must be some truth to these tires producing excessive road noise (perhaps it could be worse on some chassis designs?).

A sample post on the topic...

Wind noise with Michelin CrossClimate2​

I recently had a set of crossclimate2 tires installed on my civic. On the first drive, I noticed a type of wind noise, like wind going through a tunnel, which makes since with the large grooves this tire has. The noise bothers me enough that I’m probably going to exchange them under the Michelin 60 day satisfaction guarantee, but I first wanted to ask here if there could be other causes of this noise, like wheel imbalance or alignment issues. The alignment was checked after the new tires were installed, but the guy said they weren’t off by much, so recommended checking again after 6-8k miles. These tires have a 3/5 noise rating on treadwell. If I exchange them, I’ll probably get either the defender 2 or avid ascend gt.