Replaced a right front drive axle on my Taurus SHO and afterwards it quit pulling in after only a block. Apparently, I did not get it fully engaged into the transaxle. Upon inspection, the last 1/16" of the axle spline raised teeth must have been “machined off” flush circumferentially by the internal drive gear when the axle became disengaged. What to do about the metal filings in the transaxle? Is it doomed? Metal must have circulated throughout the system, so draining & changing the fluid seems like a lost cause.
Why was the axle so difficult to seat into he transmission to begin with?
Sometimes a halfshaft will go into a transaxle and the cir-clip engages with no problems. Othertimes it requires getting the halfshaft started into the transaxle, and then a soft dead blow hammer is used to smack the end of the halfshaft to get the cir-clip to engage.
I wouldn’t worry about the small amount of metal that went into the transaxle. That’ll just sit at the bottom of the pan, and plus there’s a filter in the transaxle. But what I would be concerned with is, where the splines on the side gear that halfshaft slides into damaged to a point where a new halfshaft can’t be inserted.
Tester