2002 V70 T5, 95,000 miles.

I was driving after performing some front end work and noticed a new vibration. It occures at highway speed (60 +) and only occures during acceleration or maintaining speed. When you let off the accelerator the vibration goes away. There is no evidence of the vibration at slow speeds.

Two weeks ago I replaced the inner and outer tie rods. Today I replaced the control arms and the ball joints. The car drove fine after replacing the tie rods but not after replacing the ball joints and control arms.

I performed the replacement of the control arms and ball joints while keeping the drive shafts attached to the hubs. Both hubs were hard to re-attach to the control arms as the splined joints of the drive shafts had partly pulled out due to wrangling the control arms in. After fiddling for a while the splined joints went back as they were (suposedly, they were still covered by the boots) and the ball joints were re-attached. I noticed the vibration on the test drive after.

Have I possibly messed up the axle due to this repair or is there something else I might be missing.

Brent

 

Don't mean to hijack, but why did you have to replace the control arms?

 

Were the bushings in the old control arms bad?

If so the axle might have been bad as well and with the new control arm you might be feeling the vibration now and before with the bad bushings you could not feel it.

 

The bushings were bad in the control arms and it ended up being about the same price to replace the entire unit rather than buying new bushings and having them pressed in.

So messing with the drive shafts during repair should not have messed them up?

Last night I got under the car and performed the test described in other posts for CV axle issues. When I held the inner drive shaft steady and twisted the outer drive shaft I got significant play. I will be replacing the axles next week.

Tech - Why do you not like DSS axles, and are they better or worse than rebuilt axles from a CV axle shop (they install rebuilt units, don't actually rebuild on site).

Also, how much play should there be in the drive shaft when the transmission is in park. When I twist the shaft I get a decent amount of play, maybe 1/4" to 1/2" rotation (hard to judge).

Brent

 

I doubt you caused any damage.

There should be no play at all between the inner joint and the shaft.

The DSS axles are cheap and the inner joints usually come new with play in them.

 

Apparently my front bushings are split...was quoted $460 plus a $65 alignment? Does this sound feasible? I was also quoted $565 for timing belt replacement including pulley and rollers when the time comes.

 

Those are pretty good prices.

 

Good to know, thanks Tech.

 

I replaced both axles which took care of the issue. Car runs great now.