New noise... low level whine

[Snaga Wishing I was lost Find all posts View Profile Close Snaga]

Hi all,

I noticed a low level whine today when I had the radio on mute after a phone call in the car (hands free of course )

It's a very low level noise, that increases frequency with the revs of the engine and then drops off when the revs drop.
It doesn't go away totally when the car is at idle but is much quieter.

When I got home I had a listen from under the car and it sounded like it was coming from the rear of the engine (near the transmission case I think)

But when I listened from under the bonnet it sounded like it was coming from the front of the engine :?

Any suggestions as to what it might possibly be??

I'll be calling past a Toyota dealer tomorrow arvo so I'll get them to have a listen to it but thought I'd ask here as well

[Guest Close Guest]

Silent drive blower belt? Oh wait wrong car.. :roll:

It may just be some of the harmonics n the engine in reality?

[Snaga Wishing I was lost Find all posts View Profile Close Snaga]

Silent drive blower belt? Oh wait wrong car.. :roll:

It may just be some of the harmonics n the engine in reality?

SilentDrive™ Belt Drive

The same technology that drives the huge blowers on Top Fuel Dragsters and Funny Cars has been refined by Powerdyne to produce the only belt-driven centrifugal supercharger manufactured today. Utilizing the latest reinforced belts and precision machined drive pulleys, the patented SilentDrive™ system eliminates the annoying rattles, chattering, whine and reliability problems encountered with conventional gear-driven. superchargers.

Woo hoo... get me one of those 8)

[Snaga Wishing I was lost Find all posts View Profile Close Snaga]

3 opinions so far...

* Mechanic mate over the phone... (with my crap description of the sound to go by ops: )
He thinks it could be an Alternator belt or bearing... tiny amount of WD40 on the belt to see if it stops.

* Not mechanically challenged like me but not mechanic mate of mine...

Thinks it could be a bit of dirt in the Alternator
(i think this might be the correct diagnosis as I heard it first after I gurney-ed the mud off the underside of the car and noticed one of the wheel arch shields was lose.)

* Toyota Mechanic had a listen today...

He thinks it's the Power Steering Pump...
:?: Would the power steering pump make a noise in time with the revs though :?: :?

[Guest Close Guest]

Woo hoo... get me one of those 8)

They still whine believe me...


It could be the power steering pump or a pulley near it?

[Snaga Wishing I was lost Find all posts View Profile Close Snaga]

TP... you were right.

They have had the car twice... and going back again today to take a mechanic for a drive as the power steering now fails completely on occasions

They have overhauled the power steering pump which stopped the whining noise but then they noticed the AC tensioner needed to be replaced so they needed to order that part in.

So I picked the car up on Thursday night last week and was told they have disabled the AC by taking off the AC belt (so don't lose it... we'll need that bit later )

Took it to Straddie for the weekend and had the power steering fail completely 3 or so times over the weekend with a couple of other heavy steering moments as well.

Took it back to them on tuesday night so they could have the car all of Wednesday and they tell me tensioner is installed and power steering is working perfectly.

Well, not so... yesterday pulling into a parking space at the shops the power steering fails COMPLETELY!!!! It was worse than my old Datsun 260C station wagon :shock:
I must have looked like the most useless driver on the planet... took me about a 6 point turn to reverse into this space ops:

We'll see how it goes this afternoon... it'll probably be one of those occasions where no matter what I do I wont be able to get it to fail when they are watching :evil:

[Snaga Wishing I was lost Find all posts View Profile Close Snaga]

Finally all seems to be fixed

After 5 or 6 attempts by Toyota to repair it they finally got the fix to stay.
Very frustrating ordeal as the Bayside to the City is not an easy commute especially when someone on the phone says it's all fixed only to do a lap of the block and the problem is exactly as it was when I dropped it off.

I have to say Southside Toyota were fairly good... eventually giving me a loan car until they fixed the problem for good.

Don't really know what the problem was but the power steering kept failing and that isn't fun when trying to get into a tight city carpark :shock:
The power steering pump got overhauled 5 times in the end so here's hoping it stays fixed this time.