Bruzilla
Well-Known Member
We decided to take our Roadrunner down to our lake place for a Labor Day event on Sunday. It's about a 30-mile drive, and the car ran awesome. At the one point we were in a 65 MPH zone, I opened it up to 80 MPH and the car ran straight as an arrow with no shakes, jitters, or issues. I felt the way and SR-71 pilot does when he gets to speed and his plane acts like a plane. 
So all is well, but I had to leave at 2:30 to go pick up my wife when she got off work. My son and I got about five miles from the lake when I started hearing this scraping/grinding sound start to come and go. At first I thought I had blown a speaker, so I shut the radio off, but the noise was still there and started getting worse. It definitely sounded like metal to metal contact, but I didn't feel any feedback through the steering wheel and the car was tracking fine. I thought maybe the traction bars were rubbing one of the rear tires, but when I took my foot off the gas the car didn't decelerate abnormally. Then I thought it was the brakes, but the noise was there before, during, and after hitting the brakes so I ruled that out.
We stopped at an O'Reillys Auto Parts, and did some maneuvering through the parking lot, and found the sound worsened when turning to the right and lessened when turning to the left. The only thing I could think of was a bearing was starting to go bad or a rod end had slipped and was making contact with the hub. So we decided to go back to the house and swap cars instead of taking the Roadrunner back to the lake like we wanted.
I went out yesterday and went to pull the passenger tire and immediately found the problem. The Rallye center was loose as crap! I checked the other side and that one was even worse. I had just gotten new tires a couple of weeks ago, and apparently the guy who changed them at Discount Tire didn't want to take the time to tighten the bolts on the centers, or forgot to, and they had been slowly coming loose until they reached a point where they were rattling and chattering like crazy.
So I tightened the bolts properly, the noise is no more, but my Labor Day wasn't all I had hoped for.
So all is well, but I had to leave at 2:30 to go pick up my wife when she got off work. My son and I got about five miles from the lake when I started hearing this scraping/grinding sound start to come and go. At first I thought I had blown a speaker, so I shut the radio off, but the noise was still there and started getting worse. It definitely sounded like metal to metal contact, but I didn't feel any feedback through the steering wheel and the car was tracking fine. I thought maybe the traction bars were rubbing one of the rear tires, but when I took my foot off the gas the car didn't decelerate abnormally. Then I thought it was the brakes, but the noise was there before, during, and after hitting the brakes so I ruled that out.
We stopped at an O'Reillys Auto Parts, and did some maneuvering through the parking lot, and found the sound worsened when turning to the right and lessened when turning to the left. The only thing I could think of was a bearing was starting to go bad or a rod end had slipped and was making contact with the hub. So we decided to go back to the house and swap cars instead of taking the Roadrunner back to the lake like we wanted.
I went out yesterday and went to pull the passenger tire and immediately found the problem. The Rallye center was loose as crap! I checked the other side and that one was even worse. I had just gotten new tires a couple of weeks ago, and apparently the guy who changed them at Discount Tire didn't want to take the time to tighten the bolts on the centers, or forgot to, and they had been slowly coming loose until they reached a point where they were rattling and chattering like crazy.
So I tightened the bolts properly, the noise is no more, but my Labor Day wasn't all I had hoped for.
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. So are you referring to the lug nuts (ralley centers)? Hope it didn't egg the holes out, had a tractor rim work loose and destroy the holes.
