Right turns only, a mystery:

I (this is Jen) have finally diagnosed a pattern in the problem which has progressively gotten worse with my car (the blue one). While driving, the car has this loud vibration kind of noise which seems to be related to speed, but not RPMs. Starting at around 45 mph, becoming surprisingly loud at 47 mph, and easing off around 51 mph, there is this … this noise … a loud humming noise! It is a vibration, as all sounds are, but you can feel it, like it’s in the cars “bones” so to speak (if the car had a skeleton, that is). Somewhere around those speeds, the gears shift and the RPMs go down but the hum stays the exact same. Now here is the really strange part, and a part that I feel has a lot to do with the source or cure of humming, but I cannot know for sure since I don’t know cars inside and out. No matter what speed, anytime I make a right turn, the humming completely disappears and the car sounds … beautiful! The engine runs so quietly in right turns and the steering wheel stops vibrating as well! Ah, I should like to only make right turns all the time in the blue saturn.

If anyone has ANY ideas as to the source of this humming noise which only happens when driving straight or when making left turns, but disappears completely while turning right, please let me know! I would like to have some ideas when I go to the shop to have this looked at. Oh, yeah, it’s a 2000 Saturn LS with 51,000 miles on it.

I’m IM’ing my dad, who thinks

“I noticed the humming while riding saturday, but didn’t say anything. Is it shift gears okay, or do you have to “help it” shift gears? At first, I thought the transmission was hanging up in 2nd gear, but I watched the tachometer, and it was fine, right where it should be for the speed. So the problem is in the transfer from the transmission output to the transaxle in the front end.”

I’m calling Saturn of Waco (yes, Waco… Saturn of Austin IS NO GOOD, don’t ever go there!) tomorrow. I will post an update in a few days.