Engine noise seems... loud? (2016 Soul +)

I don't consider my 2016 loud from the driver's seat. It seems downright quiet for a small car.

Now pop the hood it sounds like a raspy bucket of bolts 😁but that's just the nature of GDI from what I gather.

MattyKluch said:

it just sounds fairly loud in general once we get up to speed.

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Could it be a wheel bearing growling or an exhaust leak? Those are my two blind guesses without being able to hear what you are talking about.

They’re not luxury cars so you’re going to hear the engine some, but I wouldn’t consider it overly loud, at least the 1.6L, unless you’re over 3500 rpm’s then it gets a bit loud.

My old 2011 is noisier, but it doesn’t have as much sound deadening either. My old Soul, the tires were so loud you could barely hear the engine. Now with new quiet tires you can hear the engine working.

Do you have any audio you can post? As long as it’s not knocking, it’s probably normal. Or like mentioned above…could it be a wheel bearing growling?

Flatsole said:

Could it be a wheel bearing growling or an exhaust leak? Those are my two blind guesses without being able to hear what you are talking about.

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Exhaust leak possibly... but then I'd probably be seeing a check engine light come on.

rhysoul said:

They’re not luxury cars so you’re going to hear the engine some, but I wouldn’t consider it overly loud, at least the 1.6L, unless you’re over 3500 rpm’s then it gets a bit loud.

My old 2011 is noisier, but it doesn’t have as much sound deadening either. My old Soul, the tires were so loud you could barely hear the engine. Now with new quiet tires you can hear the engine working.

Do you have any audio you can post? As long as it’s not knocking, it’s probably normal. Or like mentioned above…could it be a wheel bearing growling?

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I'll see if I can get some audio posted at some point. I just had it in for an oil change yesterday. I'm assuming if something obvious was wrong the tech's would have pointed it out to me.

MattyKluch said:

Exhaust leak possibly... but then I'd probably be seeing a check engine light come on.

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Not necessarily. Downstream of the cat nothing would turn on a light and even upstream a small leak might not give an error.

On that note, just making sure your car is 100% stock, correct? No high flow intake filters or exhaust? All that stuff really does is increase noise on a computer controlled economy car 🤣

Flatsole said:

Not necessarily. Downstream of the cat nothing would turn on a light and even upstream a small leak might not give an error.

On that note, just making sure your car is 100% stock, correct? No high flow intake filters or exhaust? All that stuff really does is increase noise on a computer controlled economy car 🤣

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It should be 100% stock... though we are the second owners (bought it 2.5 years ago, roughly). But nothing was disclosed to us as being "not stock", granted it was from a dealership... so... who knows? But we've taken 4 trips in it to Florida and back (from Indiana) and never once had an issue with it so if anything was modded I suspect it wasn't significant.

I notice the infamous 2.0 engine ticking the most at idle with windows up and no radio on.

Make sure the engine plastic cover is on there correctly, it has sound deadening material on it as well as the foam around the GDI pump. If I had a dollar for every time a car got serviced somewhere by some jack arse and he didn't put that stuff back on.

MattyKluch said:

... We got new tires around 3-4 months ago and since then I've noticed how loud the engine sounds ...

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Was any other work done or a multi-point inspection done during the same time you purchased tires?

Is the cover of the engine air filter housing securely in place?

TosenR said:

Was any other work done or a multi-point inspection done during the same time you purchased tires?

Is the cover of the engine air filter housing securely in place?

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We had an oil change a few weeks ago and they did a multi-point inspection and said everything looked good - no concerns. I'm guessing the engine air filter is in place but I'd have to check later.

I started thinking maybe I was just being nit picky but my wife just mentioned it to me this morning that she also feels like it sounds loud. To me... it doesn't get "loud" until we're above 35mph. It's pretty quiet before that. Once we hit 40-50 mph the engine sounds loud... sort of a "gutteral loud" like running a lawn mower. You do sort of get used to the sound over time as there's no engine knocking or other strange sounds, it just sounds sort of like a muffled lawn mower type sound. Like... running a lawn mower next to an outside wall and standing against the wall. That's the best way I can describe it. I need to take a video sample and post it here like some said.

Not sure if anyone is still following this thread but I think I might have found the issue. I believe it's probably a bad wheel bearing. I'm going to get it checked out at the Midas near me in the next few days. I'll be interested to see if they confirm my suspicion. Someone else told me their soul had the same issue and it was a bad wheel bearing. I noticed when driving at high speeds when I shift into neutral and the rpms come down I can still hear the noise (which I thought was engine noise) until I slow all the way down to a slow roll.

Flatsole said:

Could it be a wheel bearing growling or an exhaust leak? Those are my two blind guesses without being able to hear what you are talking about.

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MattyKluch said:

Not sure if anyone is still following this thread but I think I might have found the issue. I believe it's probably a bad wheel bearing. I'm going to get it checked out at the Midas near me in the next few days. I'll be interested to see if they confirm my suspicion. Someone else told me their soul had the same issue and it was a bad wheel bearing. I noticed when driving at high speeds when I shift into neutral and the rpms come down I can still hear the noise (which I thought was engine noise) until I slow all the way down to a slow roll.

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If noise seems proportional to road speed (it sounds like what you are saying) then wheel bearing is excellent guess.

If noise is proportional to engine speed then probably exhaust leak or other engine noise.

Flatsole said:

If noise seems proportional to road speed (it sounds like what you are saying) then wheel bearing is excellent guess.

If noise is proportional to engine speed then probably exhaust leak or other engine noise.

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It was a bad (drivers side) wheel bearing. Got it replaced and we're back in business.