My brother was driving my 92 z-28 last night and nailed a pothole real hard, now the passenger rear tire is making a really weird clicking noise/rhythmic vibration. It gets faster and worse with speeds over 25. I have the rear end out of the car now and I am looking at it, it has a small chip on the top of the pinion gear but other then that I have not found anything wrong. I have not taken the caps and axels out yet but I do not think that will answer any other questions. What should I even look for? Can you bend your axels? What could possibly be wrong, I jacked up the rear end and let the wheels spin under no load and it still did it. It was crazy around 55.

 

I pulled everything out and the only thing even remotely suspicious is the carrier bearings, and they look totally fine, they just seem to have a lot of play in them. Could the carrier bearings be doing that our would that only give a weird noise and not vibration? Can you bend an axel housing? can you bend an axel?

 

Axles can definitely bend.

Check the place where the axle bearings ride on the axles, and the bearings themselves. That would be the first thing to get toasted in a pothole situation besides the axle flange bending.

Potholing a car rarely does any damage to anything farther into the rear end. Nothing in there gets stressed by that.

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"So many Mustangs, so little time..."
ICON Motorsports

 

That is good news and now that you mention it, it makes perfect sense. How do I check? Would i be able to eye ball it our would I need equipment to do it.

[This message has been edited by UVA3rdGen (edited July 28, 2001).]

 

Did I say that was good news? That is really bad news, i just looked up the price of axels and the only ones I could find were after market ones for around 300 bucks. Anyone know were to buy some and how to check if they are bad?

 

I think he was talking about the axle bearings and not the axles themselves. Those should be relitivly cheap. But if anything was wrong with the axles your best bet is to by a whole rear end out of a junk yard. You can get them there for 150 bucks or less. Maybe put your gears into that one if its not the same gear ratio or a worse one. Some people may sell them for even cheaper than that. I have one but too bad its in texas and I'm in mass now but I would have given it to you for 50 bucks.