I have a 2000 Maxima with 70K miles. At around 50 mph, I start hearing a low frequency rubbing noise... almost a grinding type of noise. As my speed increases, the volume and speed of the rubbing noise also increases.

Could this be the rotor problem that seems to plague the 2000 Maxima?

 

this could be the problems but the rotors would have to be warped really badly and the highspeed breaking would give u unbearable steering vibration

 

I'm getting a small amount of steering vibration during braking, but barely enough to notice.

Any other ideas what this might be? I guess I had better just make a service appointment at the Nissan dealer.

 

Could be something simple... I think they're called vacuum plates. It's the metal plate that is behind the rotor. My mechanic was fixing something with my suspension and it got bent. It was rubbing against the rotor and the sound would gradually get louder. I brought it backto him and he knew what it was right away. He had it fixed in 2 mintues. Just pulled it away from the rotor.

 

Sounds like a caliper could be frozen.....try to see if there are any really hot calipers after you drive.

 

Are you guys on crack? This is textbook bad wheel bearing, which is a common Maxima problem. Kevin, there are two ways to test for bad bearing:

1. jack the car up on the wheel where the noise is coming from (if you can't tell, do all of them - one at a time of course).

grip the top and bottom of the tire/wheel, and pull out on the top while pushing in in the bottom and vice versa. if there is any movement, the bearing is bad.

after that, put one hand on the coil spring and grip one of the middle coils. with your other hand spin the wheel. if the bearing is bad, you should feel a vibration through the spring, almost as if the wheel has little pebbles inside of it....

or any good mechanic can diagnose a bad bearing in about 5 seconds.....

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll check the wheel bearings tonight.

 

does it only do it when your foot is on the accelerator and is the noise aparent when you are turning? If so it is most likely a bad axel. I would check with the wheel bearing or the axel

 

I get this noise, although it's crept up on me so it's somewhat hard to pinpoint as any different from normal road noise, but I hear it over my stereo now... but when I jack it up I don't feel any play in the wheel. The noise seems to be keyed to vehicle speed, and pressing the clutch pedal in (allowing the RPMs to drop) doesn't change it, so I know it's not my intake making the noise...

 

some tires (like falken 512's) tend to get noisier as they wear down....

 

The problem turned out to be tires that wore unevenly. They were "cupped"... a wavy feeling when running your hands over the edge. I only had 20K miles on them and did all the usual stuff (rotate, balance, alignment, and tire pressure). I'm getting 4 new tires today. The shop-owner where I got the tires is giving me a new tires at 60% off after a bit of complaining.

 

I was also going to suggest if you had steel wheels they could be the issue. After thinking Nissan insane for suggesting it was the tranny bearing I just replaced mine with some nice used Motegi's and the shimmy/sound has basically vansihed. While the tire guy had the car up I personally did the bearing test just so I could put that one out of my head. I've been losing my mind over the past 5 weeks with all the different possibilities and spent about 500 bucks between the wheels and a Michelin tire upgrade.