Quote:
Originally Posted by only1harry
Glad you got it all figured out and fixed. I hope I don't have the same issue from the potholes I hit, but I wouldn't doubt it. It does seem a bit noisy now once the car is rolling. Did you have a whining noise as well? I think I hear a little whine coming from the front driver's side, and I don't know if it's me but the car feels slower to get up and go, and slower in general.
What are the symptoms of a bad axle? I know a CV joint knocks, but I never had to replace an axle.
Harry
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Well in my car's case the primary symptom was grease everywhere from a torn inner CV joint boot. I had hoped the grease I was seeing was from the blown TS bushing. Some/most of it was at first but I fixed that (with Strongflex poly) but the grease kept coming out of a tiny tear in the CV boot. Multi-faceted problem.
I had a whining noise proprtional to road speed that originally seemed like tires but after fixing the TS bushing noise steadily got worse. Just the torn boot would have required replacing the axle assembly, but over time the loss of grease I'm sure contributed to the bearings going bad. On these axles repairing the boot is actually more involved than just swapping out the axle, which is itself not an easy job.
I kept an eye on the axle and every so often would jack up the car, turn the wheel, it kept getting harder to turn and binding more. No noise while turning the wheel by hand, just got stiffer. Removing the wheel could see more grease splattered around. Then no more new grease, which meant it was all gone so clearly only a matter of time before the bearings were going to seize up.
DSS axle (new) was only $109 shipped from BavAuto (compared to over $800 for rebuilt OEM!!!). So I went with that.
All told the pothole required new TS bushings (went with poly so both sides), new lower CA + and new axle assembly drivers side. I went with Lemforder on the CA, got both sides but only installed the L one for now. Getting the lower CA ball joint out is very hard with the axle in place, the top nut is right under the outer boot and recessed into the spindle, nearly impossible to get to, so I'm waiting to see if I need to replace the pass side axle before messing with it.