[GlenYappa]

2001 Forester

Indulge me the long explanation. I want to get all the facts out no matter how embarrassing.

I had a split cv boot on the driver side front axle on the diff side. I thought I would do some maintenance and replace it. Especially since I think it has been split for a while. Pulling the axle went relatively smooth and I put the new boot on. When I went to put the axle back on it seemed slightly too long. I say that because the ball joint wasn't inline with the A-arm anymore and I couldn't think of any other explanation. (Embarrassing part) Instead of stopping there, somehow I got everything to bolt back up (I will spare the details of the idiocity) and tried to drive at slow speed for probably a few hundred yards. Clearly something was wrong. The axle was really bound up. I took everything back off and pulled the knuckle this time to replace the ball joint (frozen in the knuckle over the last decade). Armed with a new axle and a knuckle with a new ball joint I reassembled the front end and everything went on smooth.

So I take off down the road and the car is driving great at speed. At slower speeds I get a clunk from the front diff area. Can't say for sure it is the front diff but that is the general area. I can reproduce the sound by driving at about 15 mph veering to the left and the quickly turning back to the right. Clunk! It seems to be mostly when going to the right. I have had no problems during acceleration.

For the record the problem with the original axle was that somehow one of the rings came off the tripot. ( Must have been when I was trying to get the lock ring on). So it was between the axle and and the back of the race cup keeping the axle from compressing as far as it should.

So any ideas about the clunk? No problems like this before the axle swap. I didn't forget the sprint pin so the axle isn't sliding back and forth on the diff drive shaft. Did I possibly damage the diff when I drove it with the bound up axle? No pop or clunk with the bound up axle.

I love this car. Especially for the money I paid for it. It's my daily driver and to think I messed it up by doing something stupid really eats at me. Hopefully I haven't messed up anything too bad.

Thanks for reading,

Glen

 

[craigbhp]

If you can lift all four wheels off the ground with jack stands and try to duplicate the noise at 15 mph you should be able to track the noise down by crawling under it and checking it out.

 

[Eleven22]

Did you take the shaft off the front diff? I once had my cv shafts and I had a clunking sound. I took off the new shaft bought new boots rebuild the old shaft and started to put them back on , when I did I noticed the small shaft that actually went into the front diff was almost out of the diff. So I called suby dealer and they told me to knock it back in with a rubber mallet. I did and put my new rebuilt shafts in and the noise and issue went away. I believe that small shaft that the cvshaft slides on gets stuck on the shaft and if it does not get pushed back in all the way you have this issue. I could be wrong but that is what seemed to work for me.