I have a noise problem with my 2003 1.8T estate

At speeds below 40mph on anything BUT the smoothest roads there is a low pitch nosie from the rear of car. A bit like an echo.

I've been in to dealer and they tightened loose spare wheel. adjusted the rear doors and re-packed the headliner. The tone of noise has change but is still there and annoying. In fact it is annoying over a period of time as not so much the volume but an almost numb feeling in my ears after 30 mins or so

Anyone had similar problems or got any ideas .

Dealer is stumped

I assume the dealer has thought of the rear wheel bearings ?

Would wheel bearings not be audiable at all speeds (more so the faster you go?)

Find a nice wide straight bit of road, drive so you get the noise then, maintaining speed, swerve from side to side. If its a wheel bearing the noise will come and go as you turn.

Does rigging or de-rigging the boot cover make any difference? I've a nasty feeling that it's a resonance thing, rather than component wear.

Ask a friend to ride in the boot and see if they can find the noise

It's not so bad with the boot cover rigged. In fact even better if boot is full. ~But still annoying. I'll try a ride in back but pin pointing it is still proving difficultr

It's not something as simple as your rear wheels gone out of balance or out of alignment is it?

My Octy estate had a bit of a booming noise on the previous set of tyres, and I just thought it was down to the big space at the back. After putting new tyres on, the noise disappeared (previous ones were pretty shafted...)

If yours haven't been balanced in a while, it might be worth getting them checked. I've always had tyres re-balanced every 10,000 miles or so since I had a clio RSi which unbalanced tyres fairly efficiently.

Just a thought - and would be quite a bit cheaper than new wheel bearings...

Cheers

Ben

Kentzer - WTF are you doing to your tyres, to get them out of balance?

Not sure - wasn't aware that it was something that no one else was having happen. I just figured that the tyres weren't of perfectly uniform compound all over, and so wore at a slightly different rate in different parts of the same tyre.

All I know is that after re-balancing the ride was much better - less vibration through the steering wheel etc.

Cheers

Ben

Most estates have a low road noise type noise and a few have had resonance in the boot. Just try chucking a box of assorted sheets or other cr*p in the back and see what difference if any that makes.

The thing you have to remember with estates is that you don't have the sound padding that most saloons have - in estates (and most hatchbacks), the sound from the rear is a lot more noticeable as there is only the parcel shelf/boot blind to get in the way of that noise.

In my estate I have the boot partition/folding boot floor. I have a lot of stuff under there, like a pair of boots, coats, gloves, umbrella, etc, and that might help a bit with sound-deadening. I imagine that if you don't have the extra boot floor then rear road noise would be a lot worse.

I normally travel with the boot floor storage full of coats etc. but I once emptied it for another reason and found no increase in road noise what so ever.