I had thought that my U-joint or differential was going on my car as
well. Cornering one direction would clunk more than the other, letting
my foot off the gas would clunk, or engaging/disengaging the overdrive.
I had a look under the car -- no obvious sign of loose u-joints, drive
shaft did not seem to have any play. Getting out from under the car, I
noticed something not right with my wheel nuts...
Three out of four nuts had loosened off one wheel to the point of almost
falling completely off the car!!! I believe my studs are stretched so
that even properly torqued nuts loosen off (the nuts were not
stripped). After tightening everything up again, went out for a test
drive, and no more clunking! I guess I was just a few corners away from
loosing a wheel and not worrying about my u-joints any more.
So, this lesson has again shown me the importance of looking for the
not-so-obvious source of problems.
Winter job -- replace the studs.
Mike
'75 Spit
P.S. I sent this a little while ago, but I was one of those jokers
sending stuff in HTML and not knowing why my posts didn't get through.
Stupid Windows 98 -- should have kept to Netscape.
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