[cdgeorge]

I joined this forum wondering if anyone else here is put off by the road noise in the cabin? I test drove the Hyundai i30 SE BlueDrive and was appalled at the noise getting into the cabin for such a modern car.

In comparison the Seat Leon 1.2 TSi was sooooo quiet - but unfortunately I can only afford the i30 based on a amazing deal I am getting. However I am strongly considering pulling out of this deal based on the cabin noise alone!

Anyone find this annoying?? I wonder if a lot of it is down to those Hankook tyres.

[AlanHo]

I ditched the Hankook tyres on my i30 and fitted Continentals - search this forum to see the full results.

In short - it resulted in an improvement.

One thing I recorded was the result of me using a professional decibel meter to measure cabin noise in a test drive of an i30 and a Golf driven over the same route at similar speeds. There was little to choose between them. The Seat Leon is based on a VW chassis and drive line and is likely to be similar.

[wbm00]

On certain surfaces (surface dressed roads, I find) it resonates and echoes in the cabin to the extent that listening to the radio/holding a conversation with passengers is impossible. Yet on a decent road surface road noise isn't something I generally notice.

I thought road noise would have been addressed in the 2015 i30 facelift but from your comments it appears that this isn't the case.

[AlanHo]

I have posted a lot of information about road noise on this forum - in a number of threads. So far as I can recall - I am alone in having used proper sound measuring equipment in road tests of cars fitted with different tyres on a variety of road surfaces.

My interest stems from the fact that I suffer from hearing loss and background noise prevents me from hearing a conversation in the car.

We are retired and are able to socialise with friends a lot - we regularly go out to events or restaurants and take it in turns who drives who. In addition - as longstanding forum members will be aware - we are regularly on holiday and using a hire car. Hence I have been able to make subjective comparisons of a number of cars - these include

VW Golf and Polo
Nissan Qasqai
Peugeot 208 and 3008
Mazda 3
BMW 320
Mercedes B series
Audi A3 and A4
Skodia Octavia
Citroen 4 Picasso
Renault Captur
Toyota Avensis
Hyundai i20
KIA Venga

My conclusion is that there is little to choose between them in terms of cabin noise on rough surfaces. The main differences seem to be related to the size and weight of the car - the smaller and lighter are the noisiest and the big and heavy more muted. I have wasted a lot of money in having cars fitted with sound deadening materials and changing tyres for precious little gain other than from the placebo effect.

So my message to you is if you honestly believe the SEAT to be better than the i30 in terms of cabin noise - then go buy one.  Most i30 owners here are happy with their choice of car and are able to put up with the terrible din you refer to.

[Dazzler]

  I am a bit surprised at your comments. Maybe the roads where you test drove it are particularly coarse? I find the 2nd generation i30 (GD) a bit better than the previous model (FD)

I have test driven and rented a lot of cars and have found the i30 to be  about mid range in its class. As Alan says the standard tyres don't help.

[pidim]

Road noise was a problem for me mainly on regional coarse chip road surfaces, but I also got rid of the Hankooks and replaced with Bridgestone Serenity Plus. It improved a little, but it's still there.  On smooth roads and suburban driving, there is no real issue for me anymore.  The Hankooks were awful things

[cdgeorge]

...

My conclusion is that there is little to choose between them in terms of cabin noise on rough surfaces. The main differences seem to be related to the size and weight of the car - the smaller and lighter are the noisiest and the big and heavy more muted. I have wasted a lot of money in having cars fitted with sound deadening materials and changing tyres for precious little gain other than from the placebo effect.

So my message to you is if you honestly believe the SEAT to be better than the i30 in terms of cabin noise - then go buy one.  Most i30 owners here are happy with their choice of car and are able to put up with the terrible din you refer to.

Thanks and it's nice to get some feedback. I would love to go for the SEAT 1.2 TSi but currently the best deal I can muster is still £70 per Month more costly than the i30 - so whereas I would much prefer the SEAT, I have to consider my wallet

However I will stress that the SEAT 1.2 TSi is far quieter than the Hyundai 1.6 SE Diesel (no placebo effect for me there I can assure you) - by a considerably degree! Certainly if there was only a few quid in it the SEAT would be my choice of car, it's far superior.

Many of the roads here in the UK do not have smooth surfaces - I took the i30 along the A47 here in Norfolk - God that was bad (for noise - the rest of the car is fine). The SEAT along the same road surface is much much better.

[cdgeorge]

Crayman - thank you for your PM. The demonstrator I took out did not have floor mats so this probably did not help.

I'm going to tame my woes here a little on this thread; I asked the Hyundai dealer if I could take the car out for another test run - this time using it as I would to commute back and forth to work on the roads I am used to (I live 22 miles from work). And for that journey to be honest - the road noise did not intrude half as much - in fact the experience was a lot better. They allowed me to keep it overnight then of course commute back to work in the morning - all was pretty much hunky dory.

However I won't take back the fact that the surface on the A47 between Kings Lynn and Wisbech is not well insulated at all, but perhaps I should blame the road more than the car in this instance seeing as my journey home was much better (and tbh the roads aren't perfect on my route either). So will I buy the car now - probably "yes" - Crayman has warned me about the build quality especially as the car ages - but generally reviews are good so I'm going to bite the bullet. Then I will give the car a review during ownership.

I will emphasis again that the Seat 1.2 TSi is a better car in the same class - but I got a better deal on the Hyundai and now that I conclude it's not half bad - Hyundai will get my business.

Hey I must point out that on the way to work the tyre pressure indicator warning was showing that 3 tyres needed checking - I think that's pretty cool - but "three" tyres and not just the one! I kept trying to bypass the warning by pressing the trip button and check on the MPG, but this only worked for one second when the warning took over again.

I currently own a Toyota IQ to commute back and forth to work and I would say that the IQ is more economical despite the i30 being officially more frugal with fuel than the IQ.

Perhaps more to report later...

[ibrokeit]

That is good to read - about the noise and your normal commute.

My FD can be quite noisy, esp. at speed on the right surface.   When I replaced the tires I was able to get the same as what it came with, for a reasonable price, at the time I wasn't on the forum... so didn't know there were quieter tires I could get *sigh*

[Doggie 1]

I changed mine to supposedly quiet Continentals and it made no difference to my ears. 

[ibrokeit]

Good to know.

[Mike SX]

I changed mine to supposedly quiet Continentals and it made no difference to my ears. 

Thanks for your input, I had wondered 

[cdgeorge]

If I were to replace the tyres, I would most certainly choose Dunlop Sport BluResponse tyres (here in the UK).

My other car (a 57 plate Seat Altea which I'm using as trade-in against the Hyundai) also suffers a bit of annoying road noise - and these particular Dunlops made a significant improvement.

So the Dunlops have proven their worth to me at least. Will I chose to replace them right away? Again I'm not sure - but maybe a tyre fitters somewhere would buy the new Hankook tyres on the Hyundai to contribute towards the Dunlops - not sure if they would though - I haven't asked yet.

[AlanHo]

I swapped my Hankooks for Dunlop Blue Response on a 2013 i30 Tourer.

I sold the unused Hankooks on Ebay (to a local Taxi driver as it happens) for about 60% of the new price. I lost on the deal but was happy with the outcome.

I carried out a road test with the Hankooks and then with the Dunlops using a cabin decibel meter to measure the noise - there was a small reduction in noise but on reflection it wasn't really a value for money exercise.

The results are in a thread somewhere on this forum.

Incidentally - I changed to Continentals on my other i30 and noise levels with those were slightly better than the Dunlops.  Not enough to get excited about though.

[eye30]

On my original hankooks the road noise varies depending on the road surface.

I have noticed on so call new low noise surfaces the noise is alot lower than "normal" surfaces.

So my conclusion is that it depends on the road  covering to whether high or low noise and not the tyre.

[rustynutz]

I changed mine to supposedly quiet Continentals and it made no difference to my ears. 

What about to your hearing, Dave?   

[Just Rick]

On my original hankooks the road noise varies depending on the road surface.

I have noticed on so call new low noise surfaces the noise is alot lower than "normal" surfaces.

So my conclusion is that it depends on the road  covering to whether high or low noise and not the tyre.

I'm with you on the road surface,between Cyril(when we had him)Bruce which we still have and Alvin Cyril's replacement, we have tried many different brands and styles of tyres,some better than others(not much though)I have hankooks on Bruce now and they are very quiet,but as someone has said in a different thread before the more worn the tyres the noisier they get

[cdgeorge]

Heck another possible annoyance on the i30 (I'm sorry to say) - if you read back on this thread I mentioned the tyre pressure warning on three tyres alerting on the dash - well when I talked over this with the Hyundai dealer his response was "we get a lot of complaints about that - but don't worry most of the time the tyre pressures are fine - it's just that the system is overly sensitive".

WHAT! As far as I am concerned this a tyre pressure warning system and is put in place for safety reasons - instead we have a "crying wolf" scenario! This particular saleman was from a VW background previously and he mentioned that sort of thing happened all the time on VWs so he's used to the problem and therefore blase about it all - you just reset the system and the warning on the dash goes away. Ah I responded - so how do your reset the warning on the i30 - his response was "you can't, you could only do this with the VWs"..

So there you have it - no longer can you easily read the trip while the dicky tyre pressure warning flashes in front of you as there is no way of overriding with a manual reset!

I forgot to mention - he said that this usually happens when the car has been parked in the sun and the temperature increase on the tyres causes the warning to go off (that's how sensitive the system is). Yes I said, but it's Autumn here in the UK and I got up to go to work at 7am when the pressure warning activated - where temperatures were quite obviously not going to be any influence - the dealer replied - Ah but was it parked in the sun? Jeeeeeez! What can you do??? 

[AlanHo]

I don't believe your technician is right - if the system is as bad as he states, this forum would have been beset by numerous posts on the same problem. What problems have been reported here have generally been corrosion of the TPMS stem and them having to be replaced.  Why not write to Hyundai Customer Services and tell them the tale to get assurance it would be covered by warranty.

I hope I am right - I am taking delivery of a new KIA Venga today which has the same TPMS system.

[Mike SX]

.. if you read back on this thread I mentioned the tyre pressure warning on three tyres alerting on the dash - well when I talked over this with the Hyundai dealer his response was "we get a lot of complaints about that - but don't worry most of the time the tyre pressures are fine - it's just that the system is overly sensitive".
..he said that this usually happens when the car has been parked in the sun and the temperature increase on the tyres causes the warning to go off..

So by parking, for example, in a shadow then being exposed to the Sun (ie. winters in Spain, Switzerland, Italy, (Alice Springs - at any period?...) is incompatible with TPMS.
How true is this 

[Surferdude]

I don't think so. 

[cdgeorge]

Here's a picture for you

[bumpkin]

Did you actually check the tyre pressures?

Only time I had any issues with mine are as Alan says corrosion of a stem (self inflicted as I put different valve caps on, and they still replaced them under warranty) and in the Winter when the very cold weather reduced the pressures by a couple of psi).

My mates Ibiza has been back to Seat 4 times since purchase due to it's oil drinking antics and they have now told him that it is "normal" (0.5L every 1000 miles!!) and demanded he cough up for all the checking since it is not a warranty problem.  You pays your money etc etc.

[cdgeorge]

No I didn't check the tyre pressures - what got my goat the most was the salesman reporting this as a common problem and brushing it aside as if it was of no concern - and of course that you can't conveniently reset the error condition like you can on VW, and that I parked it in the sun (at 7am on an Autumn day) which is what probably tripped the condition.

So, is this an example of Hyundai dealerships?

[eye30]

So, is this an example of Hyundai dealerships?

No.

The one I use are very helpful and if I had gone in with this issue they would have checked it out and not give the explaination you received.

Why not contact Hy HQ and request confirmation of the dealers comments.

If they respond as the dealer did, then HY advertising is misrepresenting safety features.

[Mike SX]

So, is this an example of Hyundai dealerships?

No, but Salesmen generally 

[Shambles]

Thing is, if your i30 was presented to an MOT tester he would fail it. Any warning signs at presentation time are classed as a fail these days.

Hard to see what to do, other than contacting Hy UK directly.

Or you could drop these guys a line and explain to them what you have told us... point them at this thread if you like.

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[bumpkin]

No I didn't check the tyre pressures - what got my goat the most was the salesman reporting this as a common problem and brushing it aside as if it was of no concern - and of course that you can't conveniently reset the error condition like you can on VW, and that I parked it in the sun (at 7am on an Autumn day) which is what probably tripped the condition.

So, is this an example of Hyundai dealerships?

No as I said, they replaced my TPMS stems which I really didn't expect FOC, given that the problem was self inflicted.  I very much doubt that any other dealer would have given that result.

As far as resetting a warning is concerned, surely you shouldn't be able to reset a warning unless you had rectified the cause?  I think it is a pretty bad design to be able to push a button to make a safety warning go away, the whole point is it SHOULD be in your face until you get it fixed.

[Just Rick]

So, is this an example of Hyundai dealerships?

No, but Salesmen generally 

Never trust a car salesman 

[cdgeorge]

No as I said, they replaced my TPMS stems which I really didn't expect FOC, given that the problem was self inflicted.  I very much doubt that any other dealer would have given that result.

As far as resetting a warning is concerned, surely you shouldn't be able to reset a warning unless you had rectified the cause?  I think it is a pretty bad design to be able to push a button to make a safety warning go away, the whole point is it SHOULD be in your face until you get it fixed.

Yeah I get that - as long as the TPMS isn't constantly tripping because I "parked it in the sun" - so therefore I would feel better in this scenario with the ability to reset the error when it's likely just crying wolf - or just not have TPMS if it's going to play up like this and stick to kicking the tyres every now and then instead.