I have recently picked up a 94 grand cherokee full time 4x4 and 5.2 engine. There is a noise coming from front left wheel/axle/diff area. Kind of sounds like a wheel bearing or cv joint. a soft baseball card sounding noise (tat tat tat tat) increasing and decreasing with speed. appears to go away for a split second right after letting off the gas to start coasting. Then it comes back. same going straight or turning either way. First made sure nothing was hanging and touching the driveshaft. I replaced the hub assembly, and also tested with removing the front driveshaft. The noise goes away when the front driveshaft is removed. Changed the gear oil in front diff and everything appeared fine in there. One thing i did notice was with the front lifted off the ground I could spin the wheels freely by turning the yoke, but when switching directions there was maybe 1/8th rotation before locking in to turn the wheels again. normal? Also felt two light clicks in that bit of travel. Any help would be appreciated before I just keep going trial and error to figure out what it is.
Most likely the CV joint. A bad bearing will “grumble” and cause the vehicle to vibrate at certain speeds.
The slop in the yoke is normal, not a problem. You will have the same with the rear axle.
Thank you. Will try that and cross my fingers. There are no vibrations just the noise
the noise is an indication of a bad bearing, and you have isolated the location, so it is not that much more work now to replace the bearing rather than wait for it to go all the way out of form.
yeah, the hub assembly and bearing are one unit in this vehicle so I did already replace that.
Did you check the U-joints in the front driveshaft for play or movement?
yeah replaced the front ujoint on the driveshaft.
Well I did do the axle shaft tonight on my 94 zj hoping it would fix all my problems. I’m just not that lucky. I could have sworn the noise was in front left even when I had it jacked up and ran it. Anyway since I got it registered today I took it for a longer drive. now it seems a little louder and is really sounding driveshaft T.Case area. and does have a bit of a vibration in that area as well. I will go back later and lift it up and run it again and see what else I can find. One thing I am considering now that I’ve sat down and pondered is maybe I put the front DS in 180 from original position. would maybe cause this also as a new sound in new area. If flipping the DS doesn’t solve it may inspect rear DS I guess. anyway i guess I can atleast feel rest assured the front left area should be good to go for a while since its all new in there.
one more bit of info I noticed. As I was turning around through a parking lot, as I would drift around the corner left or right the noise went away then came back as I straightened out. its a tat tat tat tat tat tat kinda noise increasing and decreasing with speed.