Thanks for reading....

My daughter's 1990 Olds Cutlass Ciera started vibrating on
acceleration. I took it out on a test drive and it seemed pretty
obvious it was a CV joint. I popped the wheels off and sure enough..
grease everywhere under the passenger wheel and a nice slit all around
the outer CV boot. I bought another axle and put it in. On the test
drive it was now thunking whether on acceleration or not. Not the same
way as before. It was now almost bouncing. Not affecting control of
the car. I don't really feel it much in the steering wheel. I
assumed it was because of being so far out of alignment. Took it in
had it aligned.

Driving out after the alignment, the thunking was even worse. Same
thing just a LOT worse I wasn't sure I'd even get it home. I got it
home and pulled everything apart and put it back together again.
Everything appears fine..but it's not.

I put the front up on jackstands and put it in gear to see if I could
see firsthand what was going on. When I hook up a wrench and spin the
wheel, everything seems to be smooth. I spin the wheel, the other
spins the other way.

When I put it in gear and give it some gas the thunking starts again
and the passenger side of the engine jumps up and down, particularly
when giving it gas.

I made a couple .movs of it, but I don't know if they help much. The
first couple are just showing around the area, then one shows me
turning it with a wrench, and the last one (or two) show it running in
gear. I tried to show the jumping from under the car and from above,
but the anti-jitter in the camera kinda cancels it out. At some points
you can see it.

Could it be the axle I got was defective, a tranny issue, a broken
motor mount? NAPA said they'd replace the axle under warranty, but I'd
rather not do that if the problem is something else. If it's the
tranny, the repair is not worth it.

If anyone has any advice I'm eternally grateful!

http://www.iceohio.com/ciera1.mov
http://www.iceohio.com/ciera2.mov
http://www.iceohio.com/ciera3.mov
http://www.iceohio.com/ciera4.mov

Joseph

This can be typical of a bad inner cv joint especially with the engine
moving around, one of the common symptoms of of this.
<joseph (AT) vndinc (DOT) com> wrote



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Check the wheel bearings, the inside bearing will be bad.


joseph (AT) vndinc (DOT) com wrote:

How sure are you about the wheel bearings? Replacement is $90

Shake the wheel, if it is loose at the hub and bearing it's possible.
<joseph (AT) vndinc (DOT) com> wrote



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Shep/Mike,

It feels pretty tight... But I'm trying to move it w/o the wheel on it.
This is a tough one for me... because I can see how the wheel bearing
might have been damaged when I was taking the old axle out. The Haynes
book said to just take the bolts off of the strut fork and pull it
forward. This was bad advice. I had to take the bottom one off too.
In the process I had the old axle invery awkward positioning. That
could have damaged it.

But... I still don't see how the bearing being bad would make the
engine hop when I'm spinning it without the wheel being on it. I
jacked the front end up, took the wheel off that side and ran it about
10MPH and it hopped like crazy. If I hook a wrench up to it and spin
it from the hub it seems smooth.

If it IS the bearing, replacing it would proably be worth it. It'll
put the car back on the road for a few years. If it's not... Say it's
the transmission... I've just sunk another $100 into a $800 car that's
heading to the wrecking yard.

Again frozen inner cv, won't slide in and out, pushs the engine around on
its mounts.
<joseph (AT) vndinc (DOT) com> wrote



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It was the CV/axle. I told the guy it was a 3 speed with an overdrive.
He gave me the axle for the 3 speed w/o the OD. They are damn near
identical, except the 3 spd one is a little longer. He caught it when
I took it in. He never really admitted he'd messed up, and seemed to
be bracing himself for an asschewing... But nah.. honest mistake, and
the correct one fixed the problem. My only pain is install/remove
about 4x too many... well and another alignment

I'm hoping to get a discount on a re-alignment. I couldn't get the
toe-in anywhere near correct, so it's gonna have to be aligned again.
But the good news is... The car is back going again