Noise under the steering wheel on all 2008's

hi DEVAL,

i recently purchased my 08 PRII #6 about two weeks ago....NO WAY, this sound does NOT occur in my car. a grinding sound would drive me crazy.

now, i'm certainly NO pro on this car, but if the others made it, it could be a bad BATCH of assembly??? i dont know.

i'm just here to let you know that my 08 does NOT emulate the same sound. i wish you luck in fixing this.

:flame:

 

The brake pressure accumulator pump makes a grinding kind of noise on an intermittent basis, when it operates. Try pressing the brake pedal repeatedly to see if you can hear the pump function.

 

I haven't paid close enough attention, but will on the ride home tonight.

There has been an inordinate amount of sounds coming from under the hood during shut down. Kind of like a groaning sound, maybe coming from the gerbils catching their breath??? Anyway the sound sounds like it should be there and the car runs fine, so I haven't worried about it.
Should I?

 

When you turn off the Prius, you will hear the engine coolant heat recovery pump running for several seconds, to pump hot coolant into the storage tank.

 

It's the brake accumulator pump. The Prius has electrically assisted power brakes. It can't use engine vacuum like a normal car, because the engine turns off while the car is running. To get around this, the Prius uses an electrically driven pump to build pressure for the hydraulic brakes. It runs at random times, usually when you are pressing the brake pedal. Typically it runs about every third time you press the brake, but that's not an exact number. The pump makes a buzzing or grinding sound down in the driver's footwell.

Tom

 

My 2008 is silent.

 

My '08 has a strange scraping noise near the bottom of the steering column when I turn the wheel. I just assumed it was a piece of the cowal scraping. Was going to ask the dealer on my next oil change. It is not loud and the wife says she can't hear it..... jf

 

They all make this noise. Whether you notice it or not is more a function of the driver than the car. There is inverter noise, motor noise, noise from the ICE, brake accumulator pump noise, thermos pump noise, and the emissions leak test pump. Many also develop scratchy brakes from rust, since the friction brakes are only lightly used. The brake accumulator isn't very loud, so you might not have noticed it. It's just a little buzz or vibrating sound; to some it sounds like a rattle.

Tom

 

Speaking of noises, we have once experienced a tap-tap-tap coming from the passenger side of the dash. Would occur repeatably with ignition on, car rolling or not, engine running or not. Repeatable sequence with a tap-pause-tap-tap-tap-tap that would continue indefinitely.
Only happened that day though.

 

I have a barely noticeable noise of the same type, but I can only hear it when the ICE cuts off and I am going very slowly. I consider the small noise to be something that just about every car has but you can't normally hear it in a regular car.

 

Hopefully your noise is not caused by the same thing that caused cyberprius' noise in the same location [squeek squeek].

 

I have a three-month-old 2008 Prius (1700 miles). The steering noise--a kind of "grinding" or "sizzling" when torque is applied to the steering wheel and the wheel is in motion (car stationary, power on) seems to be coming from the gears in the electric-assist mechanism. As an engineering educator (over 30 years teaching electro-mechanical engineering design, among other things), I'm particularly leery about grinding gears--especially in the steering mechanism of a moving vehicle! After being told by the original dealer's service person that this was a characteristic of ALL 2008 models (implying that it was within Toyota's specs), I took it to another dealer's service department. They were quite surprised by the noise, as it doesn't seem to occur in earlier models. They replaced the whole steering column, including the power assist components, only to find that the same noise occurs. [Then they checked other 2008's on the lot and found that, indeed, they all have this "characteristic" noise.] There is no TSB and certainly no recall that anyone's heard about. The guess is that Toyota may have changed suppliers for '08. The noise seems to be coming from either the idler gear on the electric-motor shaft that drives the ring gear or the planetary gear set itself.

This worries me.

Cheers,
Benny.

 

The 08 I test drove had a sort of buzzing (small electric motor) type noise coming from the dash. It did it at random. I didn't worry about it because I knew I wasn't buying *that* car.

The 08 on it's way to me was built last month so we'll see when it arrives if it makes that noise. There are a lot of noises that are "normal" on the Prius that aren't normal on old-fashioned gas-guzzlers (non-hybrids) LOL.

 

My 2006 had a noise that sounds like this - I assumed it was the steering actuator or slip-rings to connect signals to the steering wheel.

The noise faded over a couple of thousand miles and I haven't heard it since.

kevin

 

mine is silent except for the normal shut downs, pumps and gerbils going to sleep

 

My 2006 makes no noise when steering.

Tom

 

I'm just turning 6 months on my '08 and I don't recall a noise. It is possible I suppose that a supplier was changed mid year. BTW, if I now hear a noise like you described I'm going to be pissed at you for pointing it out because it will drive me nuts.

 

My 2007 doesn't make any noise steering either. It does make the usual collection of weird noises after it's shut off.

 

I've also noticed the noise that the original poster described. To me, it just sounds like an electric motor turning on and off, so I never really worried about it. Part of getting used to this car has been getting used to all of the strange noises it makes as well as the relative lack of noise when compared to 'conventional' cars.