I thought I was a pretty good diy mechanic but I’m stumped on this one and it’s freezing outside, any help would be appreciated
I got a knocking I can feel when accelerating, kinda like a bad joint that gets worse under higher torque, it’s accompanied by a repetitive scraping that follows through every gear that sounds kind of like a warped rotor or rubbing dust shield.
I’ve checked wheel bearings, brakes/rotors, ball joints, tie rods, tires and axles since I’m very familiar with suspensions and this seems to be something new to me. I also tried lifting the front end and spinning the tires by hand and even ran out 1st gear without being able to replicate the symptoms, it only does it under torque.
My friend said it may be the differential but we don’t know much about them, i figured spinning the front tires off the ground would have shown me something though?
It clicks mostly under acceleration, especially while turning. pretty sure it’s not the axles since they are only about a year old and boots are in great shape, they dont feel loose either.
Where did you get the axles. Were they new axles or rebuilt axles. Without a sound clip…I’d still say axles even though you describe them as being in good shape.
Yeah, I’ve had more than one “brand new” axle be bad right out of the box. I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion, but I definitely wouldn’t rule it out for now.
Another possible culprit is a worn out input shaft bearing. Without hearing/feeling what’s going on it’s hard to say how possible that is. But when they are going back you can get a feeling simliar to that of “clicking axles” except in my experience with the input shaft bearing the clicking wasn’t as fast (lower frequency), more of a “thump” I would say. I don’t remember any change in noise/feel when turning, but load was a big factor. It happend usually at low speeds, while accelerating and once up to speed would pretty much go away.
(if it is your input shaft bearing you want to get it fixed immediately. If it fails completely you’ll likely incur some not-so-fun internal transmission damage. When the fail the balls in the bearing can literally fall out and if enough do the mainshaft itself is free to wobble about.)
Problem solved. Inner CV joint… I feel like a complete idiot, although a happy one. I get to tell my homeboy too who is actually decent mechanic and thought it was the diff.
The boot was fine, plenty of lubricant, there was no play in the axle either, pulled the boots off just to make sure and a retainer ring for the bearings had cracked. guess it was sending noise down the shaft because it sounded like it was coming from closer to the trans, probably because the boot was intact and covering noise from the source. I’ve replaced at least a dozen axles after they lost lubrication and never felt or sounded like this, although it was close.
