Hi,


During last few weeks I have noticed tapping sound (or almost like a hammer drill) from front especially when accelerating and turning.
I suspect it to be bad drive shaft. I already checked visually both sides looks OK and there is no play either.
Can it be something else despite it seems so to be the drive shaft ?
I read that it could be some mounts??
I can't tell based on sound I hear which side the sound comes from.
Is there any way to check which side? Eg. is it possible to remove the shaft and have a test drive with rear wheels only (model is with AWD) to see if the sound disappears?
If I remove the shaft ( I think it's pretty easy job to DIY) is it possible to investigate which one is defected?


Any other idea?

 

Possibly it is coming from one of the CV joints. How many miles/kilometers are on the car?

 

Sorry..forgot to mention all basic info. It's 2004 T6 model. It's been done 115k miles.

 

I there any way to check which side is faulty?

 

You might get lucky and hear a click by jacking up one side at a time and rocking the wheel forwards and backwards. Also, with jack stands in place, you might find some movement by grabbing hold of the front half shafts (one on each side) and giving them a shake. Just conjecture on my part as I haven't had that problem yet.

 

Not sure if it's the CV after all. I did some testdrive on parking lot. I drove on small circle both direction and didn't hear the sound...I suppose it should be heard if the joint is faulty.
The sound is intermittent, sometimes it can be heard even when driving straight at walking speed . Even the sound follows the speed it's still way faster than rotating wheel...

I was thinking that maybe it comes from drive shaft which transfers the power for rear wheels, the long one? It has some gears right, so if turns faster that wheels

 

Mine made noise from the back and it turned out to be a right rear wheel bearing assembly. I think it was around the 120k km mark so maybe only 70 or 80 thousand miles. I have heard it is common for them to fail. I replaced both and it was quite difficult to get the old ones off, just can't remember at the moment what trick I finally used.

For driveshaft related problems you could try Colorado Drive Shaft. They will be considerably less than buying new and they could rebuild your old one.

 

No you can not pull CV axles and drive around. As soon as a shaft comes out of the transmission it locks up.

It is likely one of the axle joints but you may not be able to figure out which one until they get worse. Mine went from an occasional click or pop to a detectable sound in about 5,000 miles. I drove 1/2 way around the western part of the USA before I figured it out.

 

I was in correspondence with the drive shaft people and what I remember, they said that when it fails you might feel movement, probably at the forward joint. I took it into the Volvo dealer for diagnosis just to be sure and they found it was a rear wheel bearing. In hindsight and from what the dealer fellows said, they (wheel bearings) fail sooner than the CV joints or the rear drive shaft.

 

Marpelto, did you figure out if the CV shaft was the problem? On my 2005 T5 AWD, when I turn the wheel to the right I believe the right wheel is clicking. Also when I drive straight, under torque, I hear the same clicking but I am not sure if it is the right wheel any more. Please update me if you found what the problem was.

 

I already took off the passenger side drive shaft and inspected it. I didn't pull the boots off but flexed and bent it in any directions while feeling any play or weird sounds...nothing. It was smooth and no play. I'm not a professional and I don't know how a bad shaft behaves, but despite of that, I honestly think that this one must be OK.
Btw..it was really easy to take the shaft off. Took me less than 30 minutes.

Next I'll pull off the driver side shaft and check that.

 

Took me some time to finally got it right.
I almost forgot the whole thing since the sound disappeared for some time until it came back even worse.

This time I to check the propeller shaft.
Since it's fairly easy to remove, I decided to do a drive test without it (so front wheel drive only)
The tapping sound disappeared, so I knew it was the prop shaft.
I took apart all CV joints. The grease inside was all dirty and dried up.
Joints were stiff because of all that dirt. But other than that joints were ok.
I just cleaned it all up and put fresh grease and that eventually fixed the issue.

 

On my 04 w/awd it turned out to be the front to rear driveshaft. I disassembled it to find very poor quality grease in the two cv joints. I packed new cv joint grease inside both the ends of the joints , ignored the torn boots and reinstalled .
No more clicking on acceleration ! BTW , anyone know of a source for the boots for the cv joints ?
If your vehicle is popping or clicking on a turn only situation , it will turn out to be the side opposite of the turn direction . E.g. , if it clicks or pops while turning to the left , it will be the r/h side c.v. shaft .

 

Re boots I've had them replaced years past by an Indie who got them from dealer I think--they weren't much $ as I recall.