Weird grindingish sound intermittent when turning

[Brewhacker]

Hello All, first post!

So, here’s one for all you long time owners. I have a 2018 SRW 3500 shortbox crew cab 4x4. It’s in great shape, I baby it. It’s got about 55,000 Miles on it right now. This is my daily driver and only vehicle. I use it to pull my 43ft 5th Wheel RV regularly.

Lately I’ve had a few problems and I “feel” like they are related.

1. At about 75-80mph (like almost 78 exactly) I get a very slight vibration/wobble. It’s not horrible, but noticeable as things in the cab rattle.
2. I have lost 3 lug nuts in the last 6 months. I “think” they’re all on the same axle/wheel… but I can’t be 100% sure.
3. When I come to a stop after driving for a few mins and then i go to turn, seemingly mostly when turning left, but I can’t be sure, I get a slight grinding feeling for about 1.5seconds and then as I drive more it goes away. It doesn’t happen EVERY time either, it’s intermittent. It is almost like I‘m spinning out in gravel, but not as loud and prominent, just similar.

I took the truck to 2 different tire shops locally and was told that I have one bent rim (not sure how the hell I did that!). They said it’s not bad, but it is bent. I have re-torqued the lug nuts myself and I am keeping a close eye on them.

So, my “theory” is that the bent rim is flexing in the turn and the lug nut is very slowly (over weeks) coming loose. I’m also thinking the ”grinding” noise is the wheel flexing back and forth on the hub. I can’t really verify this, it’s just a theory. When I took it into the dealership and described it the service manager immediately theorized the same thing without me saying it….so that kind of validated my theory…but who knows.

I’m getting ready to drop nearly $4000 on new wheels and tires thinking maybe this would fix it. I’d rather avoid this, but am willing to do so to fix the issue. I could just replace one wheel but I am not opposed to an “upgrade” too! ;-). But, I’d be pissed if I spent all that and it didn’t solve the issue.

Does anyone have any other ideas? Has anyone else experienced something similar?

Appreciate any feedback.
Randy

 

[ExpressRules]

Check your wheel bearings. It's easy to check, get wheels off the ground and give them the shake test. My driver's side front wheel got a humming sound on left turns, get it on a lift and was amazed how much play there was.

 

[PoMansRam]

Are the wheels and lug nuts factory? If a lug nut is coming loose, it sounds like the wheels aren't mating up to the hub face correctly or the nuts aren't seating to the rim right.

 

[Brewhacker]

Check your wheel bearings. It's easy to check, get wheels off the ground and give them the shake test. My driver's side front wheel got a humming sound on left turns, get it on a lift and was amazed how much play there was.

Thanks, I plan to take it in to the dealership so I’ll ask them to check that. I did check one side and it seemed ok…I guess I could lift the other side and check that too before I take it in…hmmm….

thanks again
Randy

 

[Brewhacker]

Are the wheels and lug nuts factory? If a lug nut is coming loose, it sounds like the wheels aren't mating up to the hub face correctly or the nuts aren't seating to the rim right.

Factory wheels. Lug nuts are factory as far as I know. Exception is the previous owner had installed lock bolts on one each wheel. Funny enough one of those is what came off. I have remove one other, so I still have two on there. I guess I should take them off and replace them with standard lugs. I’ve been told they have a tough time torquing those. And I don’t see anyone stealing my wheels. Oh, and the replacement lugs are from Autozone, but they look identical to the stock.

All that said, the mating issue is on my mind because of the bent wheel. Plus I wonder if the tire shop used an impact wrench and didnt have the wheel straight….causing some of the warping.

thanks for the input!
Randy

 

[Jeepwalker]

Do yourself a favor and get yourself a 'good' used rim and replace that bent rim, when you are installing new tires. That might be the cheapest thing you can do. Start looking now, give yourself some time to come up with a wheel. Constant vibration from a warped/bent wheel is just going to lead to other, more expensive down-stream problems down the road -- excessive wear/failure of: wheel bearings, tie rods, axles, diff issues, shocks, front driveshafts, xfer case bearing, etc. Unchecked wheel balance/vibration is an often overlooked root-cause of driveline problems.

Hard to say what the grinding noise is now: ball joint, hub bearing, brake pads, etc. Have the dealer look it over. Don't overlook the possibility of a limited-slip rear diff that might not have enough friction modifier agent in it. That can spoof a 'rubbing' noise/feel too. Let us know what it turns out to be.

 

[Dean2]

Hello All, first post!

So, here’s one for all you long time owners. I have a 2018 SRW 3500 shortbox crew cab 4x4. It’s in great shape, I baby it. It’s got about 55,000 Miles on it right now. This is my daily driver and only vehicle. I use it to pull my 43ft 5th Wheel RV regularly.

Lately I’ve had a few problems and I “feel” like they are related.

1. At about 75-80mph (like almost 78 exactly) I get a very slight vibration/wobble. It’s not horrible, but noticeable as things in the cab rattle.
2. I have lost 3 lug nuts in the last 6 months. I “think” they’re all on the same axle/wheel… but I can’t be 100% sure.
3. When I come to a stop after driving for a few mins and then i go to turn, seemingly mostly when turning left, but I can’t be sure, I get a slight grinding feeling for about 1.5seconds and then as I drive more it goes away. It doesn’t happen EVERY time either, it’s intermittent. It is almost like I‘m spinning out in gravel, but not as loud and prominent, just similar.

I took the truck to 2 different tire shops locally and was told that I have one bent rim (not sure how the hell I did that!). They said it’s not bad, but it is bent. I have re-torqued the lug nuts myself and I am keeping a close eye on them.

So, my “theory” is that the bent rim is flexing in the turn and the lug nut is very slowly (over weeks) coming loose. I’m also thinking the ”grinding” noise is the wheel flexing back and forth on the hub. I can’t really verify this, it’s just a theory. When I took it into the dealership and described it the service manager immediately theorized the same thing without me saying it….so that kind of validated my theory…but who knows.

I’m getting ready to drop nearly $4000 on new wheels and tires thinking maybe this would fix it. I’d rather avoid this, but am willing to do so to fix the issue. I could just replace one wheel but I am not opposed to an “upgrade” too! ;-). But, I’d be pissed if I spent all that and it didn’t solve the issue.

Does anyone have any other ideas? Has anyone else experienced something similar?

Appreciate any feedback.
Randy

It really is not very complicated. Bent rims definitely bad for truck and will create, hop, wobble, screwed up bearings etc. If it is wobbling bad enough to throw lug nuts you need to get it off the truck ASAP before you do even more damage.

I presume you have a full size spare. Put it in where the bent rim is and see if that solves your problems. Go from there.

 

[GTyankee]

I would get a good wheel, mount it on the drivers side rear
See if that makes any difference.

I won't let the dealership rotate or balance my wheels & tires
most of the dealerships don't have someone that knows how to work the balancing machine

 

[Jeepwalker]

I won't let the dealership rotate or balance my wheels & tires
most of the dealerships don't have someone that knows how to work the balancing machine.

I agree that a tech needs to know how to use the advanced features of a good balancer ..and many don't. From my experience speaking to the tire techs in our area, even so-called 'good' tire shops' techs don't always know good tire balancing techniques.

However, our local small-town GM dealer has a Hunter Road Force Balancer (all GM service dept's are required to have one). They ONLY balance all tires they install using the Road Force Balancing feature. That's pretty much the best balancing you can get. Because they do it day in and day out, their guys understand and know how to use it. In fact they will do (upon request) rim-mathing ...another advanced RFB feature which many shops don't do ..or even know how to do. That means, after the balancer indicates the amount of balance, it determines how the wheel and tire can be rotated to achieve even less balance!

I've had them do several sets of tires I bought off Walmart.com. In fact, I've taken in Walmart-balanced tires (they do kind of a crappy job ...and the walmart guy says they NEVER recalibrate thier balancer!). The RFB gives a 'balance quality' number ..and they've been able to cut the amount of weight from Walmart balancing in HALF or better.

On top of that, I asked at Discount tire and while they have all Hunter Road Force Balancers, they don't use the Road Force feature and they don't do Rim/Tire Matching. And another large tire seller in our area, the guy there told me he wasn't sure if their guy knew how to do the rim matching too.

Sooooo.... I would never assume that a good tire shop where guys turn over quite a bit would do a better job. And if you ever stand there and watch them, their guys NEVER look to see if a tire is out of round. They just throw the tire on and lower the hood. When was the last time these balancers were ever re-calibrated?? Who knows?

I take my tires to the GM garage and I've stood right there talking to the guys while they do it, and they definitely know what they're doing. But they don't have a lot of mechanic turn-over there. I honestly don't know what the local Chrylser dealer uses ...I should ask sometime. My guess is Ford and Chrysler do the same thing.

 

[Forestry_Ridge]

Hello All, first post!

So, here’s one for all you long time owners. I have a 2018 SRW 3500 shortbox crew cab 4x4. It’s in great shape, I baby it. It’s got about 55,000 Miles on it right now. This is my daily driver and only vehicle. I use it to pull my 43ft 5th Wheel RV regularly.

Lately I’ve had a few problems and I “feel” like they are related.

1. At about 75-80mph (like almost 78 exactly) I get a very slight vibration/wobble. It’s not horrible, but noticeable as things in the cab rattle.
2. I have lost 3 lug nuts in the last 6 months. I “think” they’re all on the same axle/wheel… but I can’t be 100% sure.
3. When I come to a stop after driving for a few mins and then i go to turn, seemingly mostly when turning left, but I can’t be sure, I get a slight grinding feeling for about 1.5seconds and then as I drive more it goes away. It doesn’t happen EVERY time either, it’s intermittent. It is almost like I‘m spinning out in gravel, but not as loud and prominent, just similar.

I took the truck to 2 different tire shops locally and was told that I have one bent rim (not sure how the hell I did that!). They said it’s not bad, but it is bent. I have re-torqued the lug nuts myself and I am keeping a close eye on them.

So, my “theory” is that the bent rim is flexing in the turn and the lug nut is very slowly (over weeks) coming loose. I’m also thinking the ”grinding” noise is the wheel flexing back and forth on the hub. I can’t really verify this, it’s just a theory. When I took it into the dealership and described it the service manager immediately theorized the same thing without me saying it….so that kind of validated my theory…but who knows.

I’m getting ready to drop nearly $4000 on new wheels and tires thinking maybe this would fix it. I’d rather avoid this, but am willing to do so to fix the issue. I could just replace one wheel but I am not opposed to an “upgrade” too! ;-). But, I’d be pissed if I spent all that and it didn’t solve the issue.

Does anyone have any other ideas? Has anyone else experienced something similar?

Appreciate any feedback.
Randy

Sounds like a bad wheel bearing. Mine made that noise a few minutes before my front left decided to spontaneously disassemble itself(some **** sabotaged some parts and cut them so they’d fail basically)

 

[Brewhacker]

well, in the end not sure what it was. took it in for service...had the axels serviced, transmission, and a bunch of stuff. Had them check it out and they remounted the tires. It went away...so whatever it was it's gone now. Anyway, i ended up trading it for a 2021 3500 DRW with only 5K miles on it! On to new adventures and hopefully no problems.
Thanks to all!

 

[Dean2]

well, in the end not sure what it was. took it in for service...had the axels serviced, transmission, and a bunch of stuff. Had them check it out and they remounted the tires. It went away...so whatever it was it's gone now. Anyway, i ended up trading it for a 2021 3500 DRW with only 5K miles on it! On to new adventures and hopefully no problems.
Thanks to all!

So you took off the severely bent rim that was hopping bad enough to toss lug nuts, rebalanced all tires and the grinding noise, hop and vibration went away, but you aren't sure what the cause was because you also did some minor service work. Hard to help some people.

 

[Brewhacker]

Wow, sorry to have hurt your feelings Dean2. Not that I have to explain myself, but keep in mind every person's situation is different. Making snap judgements and rude comments based off of a couple of paragraphs of conversation is a very unreasonable way to act. We don't all have the luxury of going back and forth to dealers or techs to try to "figure it out" while spending money like mad on experiments that may or may not work. We don't all have time, knowledge or the resources to do it ourselves either. I was able to resolve the odd 'grinding' noise, and honestly as I said up front...it was a tough noise to really describe; grinding sounds worse than it was. I'm convinced it was a incorrectly mounted wheel that was flexing back and forth on the lug. As I also said, it didn't happen EVERY time...so it was tough to really narrow down. I'm also convinced that the lugs coming off was due to innept mechanics who don't know how to use a damn torque wrench and would rather just grab an air tool to spin the lugs on as quickly and tightly as possible...f'ing up the lugs and nuts. The dealership (a VERY large Ram dealer in our area, and nationwide) that did the service and troubleshot it had NO idea what it was either...they heard it a couple times before doing the work, but after the work they were no longer able to reproduce it (again, leading me to believe it was an incorrectly mounted wheel). Now, the ONLY issue that wasn't resolved was a slight vibration at 78-80mph....and for me to continue dropping money into it trying to figure it out was not practical. FYI, I full time live and work in my RV, I only have ONE vehicle...this one (well, now the NEW one) and I don't have the luxury of driving all over creation two or three times a week to try to find someone who can get it right! So yes...I TRADED IT. NOT MY PROBLEM any longer! The dealer knew about the issue, so I have a clear conscious. Added bonus was a new vehicle with a long bed (better or my 5th wheel and something I was looking to do ANYWAY).

On a final note, I DO appreciate all of the feedback that everyone gave. It was helpful either way. And Dean2, have a nice day.