I was driving my 01 civic yesterday, climbing a hill at probably ~65 MPH when I heard a loud noise that sounded something along the lines of a tire blowout. As I slowed the car to a stop, I heard a loud noise that seemed to in sync with the wheels turning. I'm thinking it might be a belt that broke and is "flapping" as the front wheel turns. The engine starts and runs fine, and the car seems to drive normally now other than this sound (though I haven't tested it more than 10 ft.)

Any ideas what this might be? I had the car towed (covered with roadside assistance, fortunately!) to my house, so I can get out and take a look. I get a free tow tomorrow morning to a repair shop, so I need to decide quickly whether I'm going to try to fix this one myself; if you have an idea of what my problem might be I'd also appreciate a hint as to how difficult (and expensive) a fix it might be.

Thanks!

 

Noise from a belt would be in sync with the engine rpm. If it's related to the speed the car is rolling, it's a tire, wheel or axle problem. If the car can't move by itself but the speedometer goes up when you put it in gear, a CV joint or axle has broken.

 

Thanks for the tips. I put the car up on jacks and started the engine. If I run it in neutral, I start to hear a scraping sound that seems to speed up (didn't let it run long); not sure how abnormal this is. If I run it in drive, the noise is pretty bad...

The wheels seem to turn as they should when in neutral when I manually turn them. There seems to be a slight scraping sound though.

The car moves / drives seemingly normal; if I were deaf I might not think anything is wrong. After a fairly exhaustive look under the hood, I don't see anything that is clearly wrong.