Hello everyone, I've been doing some work on my 2016 vrs 2.0 tdi dsg wagon.

I've started to notice humming noises at a few speed ranges 50 / 90 / >130kmh and some occasional negligible vibrations on the steering wheel... my passengers think I am crazy.

Since the car has now 215k km, my diagnosis points to the front wheel bearings. However, I was expecting more steering wheel vibrations from worn bearings. Anyone had these symptons?

Anyways, I will be replacing both front wheelbearings following the manual, will i also need an alignment?

The manual says only in case the housing is also changed, but i always thought it would be needed.

If this doesn't fix it, I'm thinking the driveshaft might be too worn?

Hope this kind of post is okay, otherwise just let me know. Thanks guys 🫡

Have you checked the war pattern on the tyres? It's been mentioned on here in the past that uneven patterns of wear on the tyre tread blocks can cause the sort of noises you mention.

I second Dave's view. Not a Skoda but I had a similar problem a few years ago on an Astra CDX. Sounded and felt like rear wheel bearings but my garage that serviced the car showed me the tyres; worn assymetrically. Nothing wrong with wheel alignment just crap AVON tyres.....

Thanks for your replies @SwallownAmazon and @PetrolDave , sorry for taking so long, I was on holidays without the car.

Just got a guage and measured the threads + felt them with my hand, I don't believe there is unusual wear on them:

• Fronts have a slight decrease towards the outer threads, within 0.4 mm of the inner thread and decreases linearly - I believe this is from the previous alignment + aggressive turning.

• Backs are all the same within 0.2 mm of eachother with no trends.

Will rotate them next oil change I do to try and slow down uneven wear on the front ones.

I also considered your take @SwallownAmazon, the 4 tires are all pirellis p zero, so should not be the case here either.

Hopefully it is just the wheel bearings that are still the originals and have run out of life in them! Will be changing them this or next weekend.

If that still doesn't fix it, will think about balancing the 4 wheels and think about next steps.

55 minutes ago, WagonVrs said:

Thanks for your replies @SwallownAmazon and @PetrolDave , sorry for taking so long, I was on holidays without the car.

Just got a guage and measured the threads + felt them with my hand, I don't believe there is unusual wear on them:

• Fronts have a slight decrease towards the outer threads, within 0.4 mm of the inner thread and decreases linearly - I believe this is from the previous alignment + aggressive turning.

• Backs are all the same within 0.2 mm of eachother with no trends.

Will rotate them next oil change I do to try and slow down uneven wear on the front ones.

I also considered your take @SwallownAmazon, the 4 tires are all pirellis p zero, so should not be the case here either.

Hopefully it is just the wheel bearings that are still the originals and have run out of life in them! Will be changing them this or next weekend.

If that still doesn't fix it, will think about balancing the 4 wheels and think about next steps.

Hi, in my case (different car on a Fabia 5j combi). I've replaced the rear-wheel bearing due to a loud worn bearing noise, a test you can do that worked in my situation is trying to for example to switch lanes (in a bit aggressive way) and the noise should disappear or at least be less loud. However, I hope it is not like that for you, but I'm after the gearbox bearing noise and diff humming, but yeah, till the gearbox doesn't explode, I will use the car and send it on a mountain roads.

Had a few bad front wheel bearings and no vibration through steering wheel. Reckon they would have to be really bad to cause any vibration. Try turning left or right when you notice the hum. In my case it got less if I steered slightly left or right. Bearings didn't feel bad at all when I spun them by hand. Were pretty smooth but maybe slightly tight in comparison to new ones. New bearings and no annoying hum.

0.4mm isnt too bad on tyres at all. Mine were at least 1mm but I put it down to me constantly turning slightly left/right without realising to silence the hum. Got the alignment checked when I got new tyres and it was spot on.

Alasdair

I had a similar issue and went and changed the bearings on the rear only for the noise to persist. Turned out the bushes on the top suspension arms had worn causing the rear wheel geometry to be out and the track out caused tyre wear like an egg. New tyres sorted the noise and two new arms prevented a recurrence of it.

Bearings tends to be something you can tell if you jack up and spin wheel up and hold the spring. You can feel the grating noise rather than hear it

Even giving the wheel a jiggle doesn’t always show it like it used to. The wheel can feel firm and play free but the bearings can be totally goosed.