Hi there I have 08 malibu that is doing the clicking noise when slowing down. I also noticed a high pitch noise on freeway when not on the gas. I have visually looked at the cv half shafts thy look ok no tearing or grease anywhere could this be something else?
Probably a bad wheel bearing
CV joints generally make a clicking sound when accelerating while the steering wheel is turned. It could be in the brakes, you might have picked up a bit of road debris or a pad could be worn down way past the minimum.
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If there’s no relation between the clicking and turning the steering wheel, unlikely to be cv related. When you say this occurs when slowing down, do you mean slowing down in gear? In neutral? Foot on the brake? No braking, just coasting to slow down?
High pitched noises at high speed are often wheel bearings or differentials. Make sure all the fluids levels are correct, esp engine oil and transmission/differential fluid. Faulty wheel bearings are usually said to “growl” while differential are said to “whine”.
the car made the noise in drive, in neutral, brake on brake off. I am going to take it to a parking lot and make some turns. I recently changed the oil. And I already checked the brakes.Transmission is a pain to check in this thing but will do that also.
Thanks for replies
Well figured I would check tranny fluid today, got under there to pull plug and noticed some grease looks like from the inbound cv. so backed it out for a drive and cranked the wheel all the way to right and it popped really loud so gonna replace the cv axels and a steering shaft that is over due.
Thanks again
Good for you. Wishing you good luck that the replacement half-shafts yield a reliable, click-free drive.
Make sure to keep the old half-shafts on hand until you are ceratin the new ones are working correctly. So you can carefully compare their dimensions to the replacements. It’s not uncommon here to see posts about the customer being given the wrong half-shaft part number by the parts shop. It’s pretty easy to do, on some vehicles there are half a dozen or more possibilities depending on how the vehicle is configured, manual vs automatic, right side vs left side, etc.
I’m seeing 5 different part number options for the various configurations on an 08 Malibu w/the 2.4 L engine.
I ordered from Rockauto, they have yet to let me down yet hope my luck holds up. Also Im hoping to get reimbursed for the steering shaft, dorman has a recall on them if the serial number falls in the right range. Would have been nice if this was dealer recall, not a real easy fix without a rack.
well it seemed like everything went according to plan… When I backed out of garage it popped a couple of times and felt like it came out of gear. I installed both cv axels, intermediate steering shaft and new struts. I have removed both wheels, the driver side seems to have about 1/4 inch play where it goes into tranny and the passenger side has very little. Could the driver side possibly not be in all the way? it wont come out, This is the first time I have played with cv axels.