Yikes, my car makes a squeeky rubbing-against-rubber type sound on the front end. One day I even smelled burning rubber smell. Its REALLY bad if I have 3 or more people in the car - really creaks and squeeks then. If you put your hand on the hood of the car and bounce it up and down, it squeeks then as well.
Any mechanically inclined types out there that may know what this problem might be so I don't get burnt when I take my car into the repair shop?
To be honest, it could be one of many things. It could be the struts, the bushings etc etc. Maybe get a friend to listen and try to pinpoint where the sound originates as you bounce the car up and down.
how many miles are on your car? It sounds to me like your struts are shot and the springs are working harder than they are supposed to (hense the squeek) This could be causing your wheels to ride lower into the wheel well and the tires are rubbing making the burning rubber smell. Are the tires cupping or wearing unuaually fast, or uneven? Could be bad alignment as well.
Originally posted by cneary812 how many miles are on your car? It sounds to me like your struts are shot and the springs are working harder than they are supposed to (hense the squeek) This could be causing your wheels to ride lower into the wheel well and the tires are rubbing making the burning rubber smell. Are the tires cupping or wearing unuaually fast, or uneven? Could be bad alignment as well.
Agreed... Check your struts for leakage. That's probably the smell. It's probably burning off of your brake rotors or the side of the engine. Check for leakage when it's up in the air...
I bought this car used in July with 65K on it. It now has 73. I am going to ASSUME that the guy didnt do anything with the struts so that may be the problem. But shouldn't struts last way past even 100,000 miles?
I just got new tires and a 4 wheel alignment two days ago, so that isn't the issue. The guy that installed my tires inspected briefly and didn't see any leakage or excessive or strange wear on the old tires (which I found out where oversized for the car).
I am going to take car to dealer and leave it for a few hours soon so they can do a more in-depth inspection. This is driving me crazy!
Last edited by Da Coop : Jan 30th, 2003 at 09:33 AM.
Ok first of all struts are kind of querky. Depending on how hard you drive, road conditions, and type will affect the lifespan of sturts. If you check your owners manual you will see that you need to check them every 36k miles. With over 70k miles on your car the struts are probabally shot like I said earlier.
What size are your tires? How big were the "oversized" ones? This could have been part of the problem.
IE: the biggest tire you can put on our car is a 235/45/17 on a 8" wide rim with a 40 Spacing. You can go to an 18" rim but 8" wide is the max size that you should have. If you were over this you may have experienced some rubbing. If you have stock rims and your tires were too tall or too wide same thing, rubbing.
Originally posted by cneary812 Ok first of all struts are kind of querky. Depending on how hard you drive, road conditions, and type will affect the lifespan of sturts. If you check your owners manual you will see that you need to check them every 36k miles. With over 70k miles on your car the struts are probabally shot like I said earlier.
What size are your tires? How big were the "oversized" ones? This could have been part of the problem.
IE: the biggest tire you can put on our car is a 235/45/17 on a 8" wide rim with a 40 Spacing. You can go to an 18" rim but 8" wide is the max size that you should have. If you were over this you may have experienced some rubbing. If you have stock rims and your tires were too tall or too wide same thing, rubbing.
I had 18X8.5 rims on my Maxima with 225/40 tires and was fine. I had 18X9 rims on there with the same tire size but needed 2 more mm in the rear. I now run 225/50/17 on 8" wide rims and have more room than I need for sure, with a 1.75" drop. I've seen 19s on 3rd gens, and even 20s, but the 20s looked like they might have a problem with turning radius. You'd be surprised how big you can go with Nissan's famously oversized wheel wells.
you had no rubbing problems with the wider rims? You must have wider spacing then. I can see the since you were running 225's that would not be as much of an issue, but if you were running 245's on those rims you would.
Squeeky Front End
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