Funny Noise From The Steering System After the Car Has Been Driven For a While...

[We Are Ninja]

I've got an '06 Mazdaspeed6 with just under 90k miles. As the title says, when I go to turn the wheel, I get a squeaky rubbing sound, like someone playing with a balloon... mixed with the structural groans you'd expect to hear from the inside an old, out of service battleship that's been sitting off the coast for decades. The car doesn't groan like that, but the steering does. I can't tell if it's coming from under the hood or the wheel wells or somewhere in between. It comes and goes, but it usually starts up as I'm pulling into my complex after my 30-minute evening commute from work. It's audible under normal driving conditions, but not "loud", but gets louder/more obnoxious the further I turn the wheel.

Anybody have any ideas?

 

[We Are Ninja]

So, I've been chasing what I thought was a steering system creak/groan in this car since this time last year. It got louder and more obtrusive the hotter it got. Once fall/winter hit, it went away completely. I had read a while back that this car's lower control arms are known to go bad over time, but I read that it was like a $600 fix and it wasn't guaranteed; people had bit the bullet and still had the noise. Instead, I thought replacing my entire suspension was a better idea... -.- During the spring, before it got hot, I replaced the stock shocks with coilovers, the stock swaybars with bigger swaybars, and the endlinks with beefier endlinks.

Despite this, once the weather warmed up, the creaking, groaning noise came back with a vengeance. A lot worse than it was last summer... Then it occured to me that, in the past, suspension noises that changed depending on temperature usually involved rubber hardening/contracting in the cold and softening/expanding in the heat. And, since the arms were pretty much the only component I hadn't replaced, those bushings might actually be the culprits. I've got a friend (with a Speed6) who has a friend that actually works in the service department of a Mazda dealership. With his discount, I was looking at $950 for parts (arms and the $180 bushings that come separately and have to be pressed in)... So I did what any budget-minded car owner would do; I hopped on eBay. I found all 6 arms (4 lower and 2 upper), with bushings already in 'em, brand new for $319 shipped. After swapping out the lower control arms, the noise is completely gone.

Rearward arms (in bad shape, but probably still serviceable):

Front arms (gone and then some...):

 

[TexasSpeed]

This post has made me SO EXCITED!!!! I have been chasing the same problem for a couple of years. Don't hear it at all during the winter, comes back with a vengeance in the summer.

I recently had a local shop identify two different sources of noise- one was from my front driver side strut, so I had both front struts replaced. One noise is definitely gone. They think the other noise is from the driver side lower control arms. I'm just saving up a little before I have those done.

 

[We Are Ninja]

Awesome. Any progress so far?

 

[We Are Ninja]

Alright. For the record, DO NOT go with eBay arms. It hasn't even been two years, and they are completely worn. The OEM arms were loud and unhappy, but they still did their job. I was getting some other suspension work done and came to find that the bushings in the eBay arms had apparently turned to bubblegum in the time that I'd owned them. The arms didn't just wiggle in their mounts, they swung back and forth... -.- To anyone that has my original issue, break bread and get some quality arms. I've had really, really good experiences with MOOG.