Hello all,
I have a 02 Maxima with 180K miles. For the past few weeks I've had some sort of scrubbing noise that I'm not certain what it could be but came to the conclusion that it may be either the right axle or right hub wheel bearing.
The noise is really random. At first I thought that it came on when the car's suspention dipped too much while taking a right turn. But more recently the scrubbing noise happens only when car in motion and when accelerating in any gear (6 speed manual) then eventually as car gets up to speed it may or may not disappear. It's some sort of a scrubbing noise that transfers throughout the car as a vibration but it is definitely a scrubbing noise and NOT an axle click so that's why I initially discarded the axle idea. I discarded the axles from the issue because I checked all 4 tires for wheel hub bearing by grabbing tires north and south and pushing/pulling tire to see if there's excess play. There's not although bearings can still be bad? I loosened up the axle nuts on both sides and retightened them both to 250 ft lbs since the manual calls for 244 ft lbs I just went up to 250. But, they were not loose and the noise still came back. So I'm back to the axles as being suspects? I've never had an axle make scrubbing noises though, they typically clicked when turning on the affected side.
Any ideas would be appreciated if anyone has experienced such noise before.
Thanks!

 

do you ever hear the noise while at a stand still steering from lock to lock? I use to get a noise from worn front upper strut mounts

when it comes to bearings the front end has 2 differential bearings, 2 wheel bearings and a center bearing on the passenger side axle.

you can check the differential bearing play by how much the driver side CV axle wiggles where it goes into the tranny, when it gets bad enough you will get a leak even with a new output shaft seal directly from Nissan.

to check the center bearing you can jack the passenger side up and spin the wheel in neutral and see if you hear anything. I would even check if has all 3 nuts installed just in case.

as for the wheel bearing over tightening can cause premature damage and cause it to make noise. I have the Nissan service manual and it says 188 - 245 ft-lbs for the axle nut. I don't see any reason to go over 200 ft-lbs.

 

Thanks for replying!
I don't get stand still lock to lock noise at this point.
I don't have any leaks pertaining to the transmission so I assume that it is not that bad yet. I did do all kinds of pulls and pushes everywhere under the car and found nothing immediately but I am going to check again after your advise.

I did spin both front wheels in neutral and both wheels spin without a noise. And the 3 nuts were there as of yet. There is quite a bit of rush under the car that I will check again.

I tightened wheel bearings to 250 after having a few service bulletins on other vehicles in the past and all of these cars factory torque was around 198 or so and the bulletins stated that the wheel bearing should be tightened to 250. So, I just took the average of all those incidents in the past and made my maxima part of that. I know all cars are different and have different specs but for what it's worth in my effort to diagnose I made sure the bearings weren't loose.

 

here is another thing to check. mine would make noise whenever i was doing a U-turn or moving with the wheel fully turned until I took it off. the piece with the red arrow rubs on the control arm where the orange arrow is pointing. there is suppose to be a plastic piece there where the red arrow is pointing.

 

Hmm, interesting. I'm gonna look into that piece.
Is that piece jso the steering wheel bottoms out?

 

i originally took it off to see if it would improve the turning radius but it didn't and I just left it off. there is suppose to be a plastic piece on the tip.

 

I see. Knowing how over the years, plastic parts have fallen off my car along with the rear fenders rusting away, I'm willing to bet the plastic ends are gone on mine.

 

As an update that I forgot to post a long while ago. The scrubbing noise turned out to be the passenger's side axle. Interesting that it would make such noise.
And what a pain in the azz to remove it from the hanging bearing. It took me a long time to release it from the hanging bearing one hit at a time without messing up the hanging bearing but I got the bastard. All is well now. At 182,XXX the car keeps chugging along. Can't say the same for the rear quarter panels rusting away

 

Glad you got it fixed, and that the replacement axle doesn't seem to have any issues. My car was lowered on Tein H-tech springs from about 30k miles - 200k miles and I can't tell you how many aftermarket axles I went through after my OEM CV boots tore ~120k. Stupid me threw them away instead of rebuilding them... Anyway, I raised my car up a bit on coilovers and I found some used OEM axles and things are good now. Smooth, no vibration, no leaks, etc. 255k miles and still puts a smile on my face.

 

phew! nice man! i feel lucky in hindsight now i went with the moderate H&R at the time it sucked because it barely looked lowered compared to the H-Techs or S-techs . H&R handles great though, and been lowered on them from 80k-280k and knock on wood no axle issues.

 

Thanks, finally fixed.
They don't make parts like they used to. After you replace an OEM part, they just don't last as long, for example, the boots you mentioned. It is a disgrace.
wow, 255K. One day I hope to brag with that same mileage.

 

Tip: if you catch a torn CV boot early, you can fix it by wrapping it with any self-fusing waterproof tape, such as Super Glue E-Z Fuse Tape (available at Home Depot, etc). I have done this on both my boots - 6 years into the repair and axles are still going strong. I was just being cheap, and did not realize I was saving myself the hassle of dealing with aftermarket axles. To do the job, check that there is still some grease inside the boot. No need to add more, unless it's already bone dry. Clean the boot with a damp/soapy rag. Apply some blue painters tape to the surrounding surfaces (LCA, etc) so that when you wrap the tape around, it stays clean (in order to self fuse). Wrap it tight enough to pull the separated pieces of boot back together.

This also works on leaking PS boots, to a lesser degree.