new here, but wondering if anyone can help. i have a 2002 jeep wrangler x which, when reaching highway speed of 60 mph and up, puts out quite a rumbling sound out of the back end. the vehicle is new to me, so i wonder if this is normal? someone suggested it is drivetrain noise.
no vibration or shimmy. "swaying" the car on the interstate in order to shift the load left and right also does not make a difference.
now, i just bought the jeep and the first thing i did was put new tires on it. i put them on so fast that i have no idea if this sound was there with the old tires or not. at first i thought i had noisy tires, but the tire shop says the noise is in the drivetrain. they have not attempted to go any further with it. it sounds just like noisy tires, but i see someone suggested a u-joint, so this would follow along with drivetrain i guess.
any other thoughts, or should i pursue the u-joint thing?
Of course the tire shop says it is the drive train. That gets them off the hook! The universal joints are real easy to check though. It's probably the back one.
A "rumble" is a u-joint. A "howl" is a rear axle going bad. What kind of tires did you put on it?
I am not familiar with this tire, but the name doesn't look like "Wolverine Claw" or something that you would expect to make a lot of road noise. If I am wrong, and the tires have great big lugs for gripping in the mud, that could be the problem. Otherwise, the u-joints are really easy to check with a few simple tools. If you need to replace one, I recommend taking the whole drive shaft to a machine shop. Let them worry about it if one of the cups is seized in a yoke.
cool. doing that tomorrow. will try to remember to be a good citizen and post back to the board. i am not a regular forum user, but this seems to be working okay.
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