Not the CV or axle shaft, oh boy, now what?

[db131994]

Hello all,

We have a 2005 TB, I6 with ~80k miles on it. Started getting a gear whine type noise in the front end. My example would be the muffled sound of putting a baseball card on the fork of your bicycle to have it flip through the spokes of the wheel as you ride... Sound is speed related, and there is a little vibration input coming through the steering wheel.

I got the front end up on jack stands and spun both front tires. Its in the driver's side. I grabbed the axle shaft between the two CV joints and there was play in it. There was none on the passenger side. I need to get back under there and grab the axle shaft side that goes into the differential to try to see if it is the inner CV, or something internal to the diff... I hope it's just the CV... No signs of grease, or a torn boot, so a little surprised the CV would go. Concerned it could be internal to the diff...

Any other diagnostic advice? I like to make sure I've got the right thing, before I start throwing parts at it...

If it is the CV, my plan is to replace the whole axle shaft assembly. My searches showed the Cardone (sp?) unit runs about $40 - $60, so that's not too bad. I didn't see any "How Too" on replacing it. People replacing other parts (bearings, etc.) touched on it, but I didn't see much detail on just replacing the axle shaft assembly. It looks like the hardest part is getting it knocked out of the hub assembly, once you take the upper ball joint loose and lay the suspension assembly out so it can be pulled free. Anyone have more advice you could share?

UPDATE:

Just replaced the axle shaft, and that did nothing. Drained and replaced the differential fluid, and it looks like there is fine metal dust in it. Used a magnet, but it didn't pick anything up. It looks a little brass in color, so my guess is that's what it is... Anyone had the front different go? Anything else I can look for?

Thanks!

 

[BlazingTrails]

Welcome to the nation! One of the gurus will be with you shortly i'm sure. I have a 2wd so I am not very familiar with the front diff. Good luck!

 

[IllogicTC]

There's been more than one case of a front differential going bad. The thing to remember is there is always something moving in there, even in 2HI! The spiders will rotate. If you had a borescope available, while you had the plugs off it would have been a good time to take a peek inside, but not all of us (myself included) are blessed with the money to spend on such things unfortunately.

What's the usage history on it? Have you done any heavy 4-wheeling? Do you use A4WD/Auto? 80k is a rather depressing number for one to go out at, if it is indeed the differential.

Have you ruled out the possibility of it being something in the intermediate shaft?

 

[db131994]

There's been more than one case of a front differential going bad. The thing to remember is there is always something moving in there, even in 2HI! The spiders will rotate. If you had a borescope available, while you had the plugs off it would have been a good time to take a peek inside, but not all of us (myself included) are blessed with the money to spend on such things unfortunately.

What's the usage history on it? Have you done any heavy 4-wheeling? Do you use A4WD/Auto? 80k is a rather depressing number for one to go out at, if it is indeed the differential.

Have you ruled out the possibility of it being something in the intermediate shaft?

It has lived a sheltered life... No off roading, use 2WD, except when road conditions warrant AWD. Haven't ruled anything out except the axle shaft / CV joints. It's on the driver's side, but that's about all I'm confident in at this point...

 

[The_Roadie]

Is there play in the bearing where the CV shaft goes into the diff?

 

[db131994]

Very little, if any play if I grab the axle shaft between the inner CV joint and the differential. The noise is there in 2WD and 4WD. No play in the hub, so I don't think it's in the hub. With the truck jacked up, I can spin the tire and get the noise (driver side). Seems to be close to the differential... Axle shaft needed replaced, but I don't want to just keep throwing parts at it until I can get a better diagnosis...

Appreciate the input!

 

[SirRobin53]

I had a grinding noise that i was SURE was on the drivers side so replaced wheel bearing....So much for my troubleshooting skills..... it was the disconnect on the passenger side that used the axle as a conduit to fool me After reading here that the disconnect is most liklely what fails, I raised the passenger side and finally got the scraping noise when turning the wheel and went ahead and removed the axle and waa laa ....bearing pieces..... hope this helps

It would be quiet some of the time, then scrape, then quiet again

 

[Robbabob]

Lift the wheels by the lower control arm and see about play or noise. Having the load on the parts sometimes makes them behave differently than lifting by the frame.

 

[gmcman]

Does it sound like this? If it does, is this guy following you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kf_RYVt2XQ


But on a more serious note...does it change pitch when turning? I would also agree that it could be the splined disconnect. Robbbabob's suggestion about loading the control arms is a good one. Have someone spin the tire and listen or put your hand on the disconnect and look for the sound there.

I don't know how much play the bearings should have..likely none at all is my guess.

 

[db131994]

Take a look at the video to see if that helps. Going to get it up on stands to inspect some more...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5I6Iwn3PtY

 

[db131994]

Spent a little more time under the truck this afternoon...

Dropped the "skid plate" and saw this around the disconnect

When I spin the tire, the noise comes from both sides of the pan, but I only get the noise by spinning the driver's side tire. Does that point to the diff, the disconnect, or both? I used the poor mans stethoscope (a long screwdriver) and couldn't really pinpoint if the sound was coming from the passenger side, or the driver side... My guess is the diff is toast, or at least something between the driver side and passenger side axle shafts...

 

[The_Roadie]

The reason you only got the noise while spinning the driver's side tire is that the passenger side has a splined disconnect, and that tire isn't connected to much of anything except the CV shaft goes through a seal and a bearing, and then ends at a splined gear. (Item #9)

The differential drives an "intermediate shaft" (Item #19) that goes through a tube cast into the oil pan.

Diff oil lubes the bearings on each side of the diff, but the splined disconnect has two bearings that are supposed to be permanently greased from the factory, but often die before 100K miles is up!

 

[SirRobin53]

I think there is room for a grease fitting. I am going to put one in mine

 

[db131994]

With what you heard in the video, and what I have described, what do you think is at fault? When disconnects fail, would they be engaged by spinning the driver side tire? Thus making the gear sound. Or, is it pretty much the diff? With the uncertainty at this point, I think I will get a diff and disconnect and start tearing into it.

Anyone have a 3:42 diff and disconnect in good shape they would like to sell??? Or, have any advice on where to get them?

Thanks,

 

[IllogicTC]

I'd be weary of buying a disconnect off a junker unit (as they're common-failure parts) but you could try your luck with it. As for the front differential, that can also be had at the pull-a-part.

 

[gmcman]

Sounds like a hub and bearing. Mine sounded just like a mud tire when it was going bad.

You could pull both axle shafs and drive it and if the noise remains you know it's the hub and bearings...little bit of labor just for a check though. I believe Roadie used a gatorade cap to plug the holes.

Was the front diff run low on fluid? Can you open the fill plug and get a good look at the ring gear?

 

[db131994]

It wasn't low on diff fluid, and I changed it as a part of this process. I'm a little weary of throwing parts at it, so I may pull both axle shafts to make sure it's not a wheel bearing before I go too much further. If it is a wheel bearing, it's a ventriloquist...

Thanks!

 

[dla442]

Yes..how bout the hub bearing...sounds like a good growl to me

 

[db131994]

Just had a thought (brace yourself...) Could I just remove the driver side axle shaft and the front drive shaft? This would (should) isolate the diff, since the disconnect would be open and the passenger side would not be turning the intermediate shaft. That way I "should" be able to eliminate that as a cause. Then, I can narrow it down to the hub bearings or disconnect.

Does that make sense? Or, does the system work a little differently than what I have in my head?

 

[jpimp]

Just had a thought (brace yourself...) Could I just remove the driver side axle shaft and the front drive shaft? This would (should) isolate the diff, since the disconnect would be open and the passenger side would not be turning the intermediate shaft. That way I "should" be able to eliminate that as a cause. Then, I can narrow it down to the hub bearings or disconnect.

Does that make sense? Or, does the system work a little differently than what I have in my head?

Only if you have axle stubs to put in the hubs when you drive it.
Then theres the diff, that would lose all it's oil while you drive...

 

[The_Roadie]

Only if you have axle stubs to put in the hubs when you drive it.
Then theres the diff, that would lose all it's oil while you drive...

OEM and many aftermarket hubs are the same for 2 and 4WD, so no stubs are needed. Depends on the pedigree of the hubs now on the truck.

And the diff is easy to plug with my Gatorade lid trick.

 

[SirRobin53]

This was my scraping grinding noise that I KNEW was on the drivers side
My disconnect............... Tell him where it is, I am too embarrassed ...........

 

[db131994]

0512140921.jpg This was my scraping grinding noise that I KNEW was on the drivers side
My disconnect............... Tell him where it is, I am too embarrassed ...........

SirRobin53,

When your disconnect was shot, did the grinding change when turning left or right? I get a higher sound turning right, and nearly no noise turning left... What you would expect from a driver side wheel hub...

I think my game plan for next weekend is pull the passenger side axle and inspect the disconnect. If that looks OK, then pull the driver side axle shaft to see if it's the hubs... Hopefully that should isolate each component to solve the mystery!!!

Appreciate all your input.

 

[SirRobin53]

When my hub was going out, the "turn test", just as you describe, and how it was explained here, was what worked for me that time. This time scraping was fairly constant with speed, and sometimes went away. Turning the wheel had no effect. I changed the drivers side hub anyway thinking that was where the noise was coming from but it was not bad. (had 231,000 miles)
The guys here are the best. They will help get it solved

 

[SirRobin53]

Just let me say again that the axle will transmit the noise through both wheels. I changed DS bearing though it was not bad yet but with 230,000 I thought it timely anyway. If you are going to look at axle disconnect I found a good way to remove axle shaft.I had a tire tool that fits up through the slot in the control arm and rests on the cv joint. Use a ratchet strap on the tire tool to apply pressure to the joint, then a couple light taps on the top side and the joint will pop right off.
This way no damage to the disconnect.All force is on the CV

 

[db131994]

Ok guys, here's an update...

This thing is really making some noise now, it's getting pretty loud. Still gets louder turning right, and about goes away turning left. I took the driver's side hub off, but it seems ok to me. It's tight, and I don't really get any noise out of it. I pulled the drain plug on the diff and captured it in the video. Spinning the axle shaft, I get a similar noise to what we hear driving it. Is this normal, take a look at the video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtdw1mn2HF8&feature=youtu.be

I'm going to pull the disconnect to take a look at it, and eventually the axle shafts and diff... This thing might end up being a 2WD for awhile...

The sound coming from the diff when I rotate the axle shaft doesn't seem normal to me, and the axle stub coming out of the diff has more play in it than I would expect.

Your thoughts?

 

[db131994]

I can tell you what it is not... It is NOT the disconnect. I took it apart, and all looks fine. My plan in the morning is to reinstall the disconnect, but leave the axle shaft out. Then, pull the driver side axle shaft out. Reassemble without axle shafts and front driveshaft. Plug up the axle shaft seals, and go for a ride... If the noise is still there, I'll throw new wheel hubs on it. If the noise isn't there, bye bye front diff...

 

[IllogicTC]

The ring gear doesn't constitute every gear in the differential, and it and the pinion would be sitting still when just spinning a tire, which would point me to examining the spider gears. It may be a difficult to do through the fill hole, but it may be doable. If your carrier is sitting in such a way where one of the spider gears is sitting up pretty much out of the oil, you may try spinning the front driveshaft a little to bring the carrier to "horizontal" and spinning the CV some more to see if a little more lubrication helps.

After all, the two gears going to the axles should get some lubrication when they reach bottom (in relation to the differential oil) which would help with contact with any spider gear, but if one gear's up out of the oil its bearing may not be getting lubricated.

Also you said the play seems a little loose on the CV axle side, it may be worth going in on the other side and checking play on that. Could be one of those bearings, too. But sounds more like gears contacting to me but as I'm hard of hearing you can't trust me on that

 

[db131994]

Mystery SOLVED!!!

It ended up being a hub. Pretty sure it was the driver side, but I replaced both to be sure. I've had to replace several hubs in the past, but this one was odd... When I've had them fail in the past, you would get the occasional noise turning in one direction or the other. Then you would get the standard "slop" when you grabbed the tire at the top and bottom. This one? Nope. It started out as a constant noise, with no change with steering input. As it got worse, it finally had the change in tone / noise level when turning (quite on left turns louder on right turns). Still had NO slop when you grabbed the tire top and bottom. Spinning the hubs still didn't give any indication they were bad. As noisy as this thing was getting, and the vibration you would get in the steering wheel and brake peddle, I was convinced it was something worse...

Here is what I learned in this adventure:

1. You can remove the axle shafts by removing the hub and disconnecting the upper ball joint only. It was a little tight, and you might need to take the two strut tower nuts off to give you a couple more inches of clearance, but I think this was easier than breaking the tie rod link and sway bar end link loose (I tore the tie rod dust boot!). Anyone know of a good replacement for it???
2. Good diagnostic work pays off. I put a lot of work into pinpointing the problem, but it saved me from just "throwing parts at it." Especially since I had convinced myself it was the front diff! My approach was to isolate each item. I started by taking the disconnect apart to inspect it (leaving the axle shaft out when I put it back in). It checked out ok. Then, I took the driver side axle out. Using Roadie's lid trick to seal the diff and disconnect from getting bearing killing crud in it. I took it for a drive (with no axle shafts), and the noise was still there. Thus, hubs were the only item it could be (nothing spinning in the diff with no axle shafts and in 2WD).
3. GMTNation ROCKS!!!

Appreciate everyone's help!

 

[SirRobin53]

GREAT ! Good to see it was a hub bearing and that "shotgunning" was avoided

 

[gmcman]

Good to hear, when you hear the hub start to go bad then it's best to change both since the other isn't too far behind. Since you heard the noise when turning to the right then more than likely it was the drivers hub since that side gets loaded up when turning right.

 

[The_Roadie]

Good diagnostic work pays off.

I love it when I hear this. My whole career revolves around honing my skills as a diagnostician. For the benefit of new members, please indulge me as I post my list of 16 rules to live by and troubleshoot ANYTHING.

Bill Carton’s “fix anything, even yourself” Manifesto
1. Troubleshoot problems efficiently.
Divide the possible solution set in half if possible, as long as you can come up with questions or experiments. Is the issue in
the source or the measurement side? The income or the spending? The go or the stop? The hard or the soft? The ebb or the
flow? The potential or the kinetic? Eliminating half of the possibilities at a time is faster than eliminating the 5% possible
causes.
2. Never give up, unless forced to by economics.
There are no mysteries unless you give up. Everything has a root cause. It may not be economic to run all possible tests to
discover the ultimate root cause, but problems can and do have a solution, even if it’s a compromise. Throwing out,
discarding, or recycling an item because it can’t be fixed is ultimately an economic decision, not a technical one. A corollary
is that designers who design items to not be maintained easily are under orders from bad management, who should take
the blame for being bad world citizens.
3. Always get a good case history. Ask questions. Observe. Demand the truth.
People lie, and so do imperfect diagnostics. You may discover more by observing the symptoms, looking at animal tracks in
the dirt (historical clues in the problem parts), and asking uninvolved bystanders what they saw or heard.
4. Don’t make a problem worse by ill-planned experiments.
The Hippocratic Oath applies to system diagnosticians as well as physicians: "Above all, do no harm"
5. Use the Scientific Method.
It works. Make observations; form a theory; design and perform experiments; make conclusions. Lather, rinse, repeat. (Run
a loop and do the process repeatedly until it works.)
6. Document what you do.
You don’t want to forget, repeat experiments unnecessarily, or leave parts out. Remember, if you take something apart and
put it back together enough times, sooner or later you’ll have enough parts to make two of them. Except the universe won’t
let you do that, so it’s just a joke. But there’s a lesson in there. Take notes. Take pictures. Digital film is free!
7. Google can be your friend.
Whatever your potential solution is, some form of it was probably invented before WWII. I learned this from my first
technical mentor, and it’s even more true today, with the entire Internet to search for hints. Practicing advanced search
techniques is like practicing the piano or tennis or cooking. It’s a REQUIRED life skill for this century.
8. Use your own experiences cleverly.
Learn to search your own experiences for additional clues, even across disciplines. A car-repair solution may give you a hint
for a circuit fix. A power saving concept from one instrument may help you fix an appliance. Who knows what crossconnections
are being wired up in the human brain every minute?
9. Keep an extremely open mind.
Don’t rule out even the most unlikely theories without compelling evidence. Sometimes the obvious is right – sometimes
it’s just a diversion from real understanding.
10. Never stop learning and observing.
Never stagnate. Never refuse the chance to learn new things. Boredom is easily put aside by curiosity.
11. The most subtle and satisfying problems to solve have multiple layers.
If there was a one-to-one correlation between problems and solutions, a robot could diagnose everything. Sometimes it’s
an art, not a science, and the root cause is a chain of improbable events. Practice thinking about cascaded effects,
improbable connections, and using that open mind. And the possible layers could be from any discipline – hardware,
software, design, users, environmental effects, internal interference among similar or dissimilar systems.
12. Take your own sweet time.
Of course, that’s not always economically possible, but as an artist, you can’t always predict the hour and minute of your
success. Experience can give you guidance if it is going to be a multi-hour, day or week project. But if you knew exactly how
long it was going to take, you would also know what part had gone bad, and you wouldn’t have to be fixing it personally,
now would you?
13. Don’t expect to be left alone.
Some managers just HAVE to micro-manage – they feel useless otherwise. And a frustrated manager is an annoying
manager. All you can do is point out what your success rate is, and that constant progress reports slow down the progress
you’re reporting on. Deal gracefully with the interruptions and they’ll decrease over time.
14. Take advice, but remain in charge.
A project, product, army, or country can only have one person ultimately responsible for failure or success. If that’s your
role – embrace it. Don’t let somebody else steer the vehicle while you’re behind the wheel.
15. Find the bright spots in what looks like impending doom.
Even failed experiments or backsliding results teach you some things – such as what doesn’t work. Look for the nuggets of
good data in the mass of bad. Extract it with statistics if necessary. But don’t give up hope that it’s in there.
16. In God we trust – all others bring data.
Data rules. It is necessary to persuade the unbelievers. To prove the fix is proper. And to extract you (the diagnostician)
from the stressful situation and let you clear out of Dodge City and get on the train home.
Copyright © 2009 William Carton. All rights reserved.

 

[sarg]

I am having a similar problem except mine is not constant. I get the occasional groan or grind noise coming from the passenger side. This is all taking place in 2wd hi. I spun the wheel with it jacked up and did not get any weird noises. When this does happen (it is intermittent) it will almost feel as though a brake engages as it causes the truck to kind of lurch. Then it is as if it is freed and starts rolling smoothly with no noise again. Any thoughts guys?

 

[SirRobin53]

Well, on mine, there needed to be weight on the tire to make the noise. It was a now and then thing. After input from here, I took the axle disconnect off and found this:



Just enough bearings left to run smooth sometimes...........