Over the past week I noticed that loud grating sound coming from what I
thought was the rear axle. The grating only occurred above 2500rpm, was
quiet when free-wheeling and made no difference when cornering. This
morning driving to work the grating suddenly turned to a loud clunking
noise. Feeling like an idiot for not paying enough attention to the
warning signs, I crawled home at about 15mph, clunking all the way
trying to figure what was wrong.
I've just inspected the underside and found that there is a fair amount
of play in the rear axle when rotating the propshaft back and forth
although I seem to remember many years ago having an MG which had the
same amount of play, so I suspect this is not the root cause. With only
turning the wheels or propshaft by hand it's difficult to fully
reproduce the loud clunking however one thing I did notice was one of
the bearings on the rear universal joint was slightly exposed even
although the joint as a whole felt tight. From what I can tell it's
either the universal joint or the rear axle. Anyone with any bright
ideas??
Many thanks
Tim
SIV Singapore
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