EJZero1

Just finished a pretty thorough inspection of everything I could get my hands/eyes on, to include pulling both rear rotors to inspect e-brake assemblies. Everything looked and felt exactly as it should. E-brakes looked completely normal with no loose hardware. Axles both looked and felt great. No play whatsoever other than the lateral play between the transaxle and hub. No unusual clunking, grinding or other alarming noises, as hard as I could try to manipulate the axles.. Pulled the driveline coupler cover just to have a look and all was normal.

The noise strikes me as being related to wheel speed, and is certainly load-related. The harder the acceleration, the heavier the load, the louder the noise. When it first happened, I did think it sounded like something stuck to the wheel and striking the dust shield during rotation, like maybe a loose wheel weight. No evidence of anything like that.

Plan? Unless the problem somehow reveals itself, I’m just going to keep driving the car til it happens again. When it does, I’m going to drive it even harder. If it does turn out to be axle/CV related and eventually fails, it seems a pretty easy fix. If it’s internal to the transaxle (ring and pinion?) I’m probably not going to drop for repair until it fails anyway. (Does any of this even sound like a possible ring and pinion situation?)

Will continue to update as the situation warrants. In the meantime, any additional inputs are certainly welcome.

Big thanks to all for the inputs so far!

mj951

I was recently wondering if anyone does that...thanks!

GPA951s

I Do!

EJ- At Least Pull the top plug on your Trans and check fluid level.. If all is well there.. then wait till the next time it happens.. You didn't Hit any roadkill Lately? LOL..

EJZero1

No roadkill that I know of!

Will check trans fluid as soon as I have time to crawl under again.

Meanwhile, sound resurfaced while driving home from work again today. Intermittent, sometimes louder than others. However, the volume variations might be attributed to sound bouncing off a car next to me, versus not being surrounded by cars.

More to follow!

GPA951s

Pull the carpet out of the rear hatch area as well, Maybe you might get a better Read on it.... Then... Toss your cell phone on record and Lay it back there on top of the sheet metal.. Maybe we can all listen to it and help a bit more....?

EJZero1

No carpet in the car at all! Bare bones autocross toy that doubles as a daily driver! But the phone recording is a great idea! Will give it a shot soon.

Thanks!

gtroth

Sounds perfectly consistent with bad CV joint to me. Does it get louder when accelerating in a left curve? Mine sure did when my left CV gave up the ghost.
I never felt any excessive play by the way.

EJZero1

Yeah, I’m about to the point where I’m going to order a new axle assembly and bank on the driver’s side being bad. If I pull it apart and it’s good, I’ll repack it, put it back together, and move over to check the passenger side.

Im assuming I can re-use the hardware, assuming it comes off in good shape? Never done one of these before. Any other parts or miscellaneous things I should have on hand?

gtroth

My new axles came with new bolts (cheese heads). If yours don't, you might want to get new ones.

GPA951s

I never put new ones in unless they are bad...... never had an issue, I keep new one's on hand if the triple square heads get screwed up. Trick is to get them super clean before reefing on them so the tool is all the way engaged.

bonus12

Agreed that you want to clean out the the head of the bolts so you can fit the tool all the way in. Secondly, I would recommend checking the torque of those bolts some time after installation. It's not hard -- you just jack up the rear and check the torque.

GPA951s

You know, Im REALLY detailed when it comes to Torqueing bolts on the car EXCEPT for those, My Procedure is this: 3/8 Drive pistol grip blue point (snap on) impact, Get it good and engaged and hold it wide open... Done.. After I cross tighten them I Go around once more sequentially... It puts out more torque than the bolts are supposed to have ( cant recall what it was ) But between the wind-up from the drive and tool engagement, its about perfect... I hold the Tire with one hand and impact in the other.. On the Trans side I make sure its in Neutral and just counter hold the flange with one hand. Makes fast work of half shafts removal and installation. In 19 years of doing it this way Ive only shattered one Triple-square bit...

EJZero1

Swapped out suspect axle (driver side) a couple of weeks ago, but just took it out of the garage for the first time today. Outside CV was “binding” on the removed axle, and didn’t move as free as the inside CV. Disassembled it and found obvious signs of wear and metal fatigue.

Seems to have fixed it. Will crawl back under this weekend to check/retorque.