calviniscool

You got it, unverviking. I took it the tire place to rule out tires and the mech. there said "hub and bearing assembly," certainly drivers side, maybe both. Is this something I can fix myself with a little help from Chilton's or alldatadiy.com? Thanks!

What a great offer! But, alas, its our favorite little imagination machine, Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes. Thanks anyways! I'm taking my first shot at it this afternoon so hopefully I'll learn something.

Hmmm...possible tires even though new, eh? I'll get them switched front to back. Boy that would be nice. The acc. problem is mostly at low RPM, so is there some easy "carbon clean out" thing? I haven't ever changed out the O2 sensor. The check engine light is on all the time (I have ignored it), so it could be pointing to that - although the acceleration problem started long before the check engine light came on and stayed on. Thanks!

Great. Thanks. I'll give it a shot.

Thanks for the suggestions! It has been getting worse over time - I'd say over the past two months. And, yes, it is AWD. I guess I'll try to rule out the CV joint(s)...umm...how does one do that? And the u-joint? Are these things a tool-challenged guy can do himself?

No steering wheel vibration. Wouldn't a CV problem be mainly when turning? Turning doesn't affect the noise.

Looking for a little help here. I'm a car repair newbie, but need to save some money these days. I have a 1997 Legacy GL wagon 2.5 automatic - 122K. Two things. From the day we bought it at 65K it has had a small hesitation when accelerating. It is the same today as 50K ago. Not a terribly big deal really, but would be nice to get rid of it. Is this a common thing? Now the bigger deal. I have a deep pulsing / whoomp, whoomp, whoomp (not whomp) noise coming from the front wheels (I think - I guess it could be anywhere up front). It generally sounds like a tire problem, but the tires only have 10K, and look fine. Frequency goes with RMP. At high speed it just sounds like terrible road noise, but when slower you can tell it is individual whoomps. Turning doesn't matter. Breaking doesn't seem to matter. What's the deal?