l75eya

The outer joint just ...came apart. No bearings left. I'm guessing they just started wearing and then decided not to hold together anymore. Long story short I drove another 150 miles with the outer-joint of the rear axle just rattling and bouncing and skipping around in the axle cup. It was extremely noisy. Just yesterday I took the axle apart...well...kinda. I figured because of how the rear suspension is and how the axle failed, I could run my car without it. So what I did was jack it up yesterday and remove the 3 bolts from the rear trailing arm Photo credit 987687 So I removed those bolts and that gave me a little play to pull the wheel towards me. When I pulled the wheel toward me that allowed me to maneuver the axle out of the cup on the back-side of the wheel hub. Photo credit 987687..again. (thanks!) after I did this the axle literally fell out of the cup sticking out of the diff. Thanks for reading so far haha because here's my question. Is it safe to drive around with no rear axle? I've got the cup part of the axle still in the wheel and the cup part of the axle still in the diff...but no axle between them. Should I remove the cup from the diff? Could driving like this damage my diff? Just out of curiosity, what would happen if i put the car in 4wd like this? I took the car for a drive after and all seemed well, except there is a rubbing noise coming from back there now that sounds like a slight tire rub. It's NOT a tire rub, but it sounds like what a tire rub would sound like, and it goes away temporarily when the back suspension loads up; for example if you drive over a little hump in the road at speed, the noise gets louder just after the hump, when the suspension drops and the whole weight of the car has been lifted a bit, but when the car comes down on the suspension after a hump like that and the suspension is all compressed back there, the noise goes away momentarily. On level ground with no body weight shifting, the rubbing sound is constant but not too loud. What say ye? Thanks for the helps!

Bridgestones. Any Bridgestones. My tires have gone across the country four times now and they still have decent tread on them. And I'm pretty sure they are the original tires. (What the cars came with OEM)

@Scoobie; his car was ticking before he purchased it, IIRC. @Glen, yeah, it was just changing out the oil pump. New pump + new "Mickey mouse" gasket, and no more ticking. Like some have said here, it took a bit of work to get rid of their tick. From reading on these boards though, it seems most have had their issues resolved just by doing what I did. It also makes more sense to do it that way as it's the most cost effective way IMHO. I don't think I'm going to be able to help you out this weekend though, as my boss has lined up a camera job for me, which kinda sucks, but at the same time is some welcome extra income =P I'll let you know how next weekend looks though and lemme know when you've sourced a pump!

Made it 150 miles home with a busted rear pass. Axle. My my was that noisy.

Once you've got the ac cond. And the radiator out of the way, the grille off too, getting to the outer timing belt covers isn't too difficult. Hopefully none of the plastic studs are snapped on yours otherwise you'd have to get creative to get them of buy it's really not much of a headache at all.

Try it!

What Gloyale said. Though it only will engine brake when you're going over 33-ish mph. Try coasting down a long hill from 20 mph on. You'll see that the car will gain speed as you would expect it to, but just around the 35mph mark you'll get a little jolt (still without you doing anything on your end) and it'll start to engine brake. Thought it was pretty neat after I got used to it.

Curiouser...and curiouser! It's a shame that it's at your expense, but I'm very much looking forward to the outcome of this situation.

That would only happen if your alternator was dead. Engine should keep running if you disconnect a lead from the battery with a good alt. That's all besides the point though, hoping a fresh(er) battery solves your problems kid!

Usually, in my experience, a loose ground will cause the car to click but then lose all power completely. You're getting a click, but then when you disengage the starter you get power back, so it seems like it's just a low battery. Like if you hook up the battery and don't tighten one of the cables enough, a loose neg, you crank the engine and it clicks and then there's no power and you have to unhook and rehook the terminals, and tighten them a bit. Hopefully a known good battery will crank your car right up. And yeah, I see your dilemma. Not much room, and it does look like a bigger road right out of your driveway. Bummer.

Just brainstorming here. And you only need about a good 30 feet of rolling distance. Is your driveway long enough? You can do it in reverse too, but it'll be a bit jerkier I push started a 93 altima on about a 20 foot long strip of highway island off an on ramp. The good thing was it was a very slight downward slope for pushing the car forward on. The bad thing was that it took me more than 8 tries to push the car fast enough to get it to push start and I had to push it back up the hill each time. The other bad thing was that cars were whizzing past me at 50-60 mph the whole time. And it was 90+ degrees out. And I hadn't eaten all day. And ...well yeah. That whole experience sucked.

Pop the battery from your explorer in there, start it up, then swap batteries while your soob is still running.

If it's feasible, I'd say just push start it already. Get it rolling, drop it in second, pop the clutch and presto, it will start. Then just drive around for an hour and let the car charge the battery up itself. Also, this is just me, but whenever I'm having issues with my car not starting, I make certain to turn off every bit of electrical draw possible.

To assure that it isn't hydro-locked, you can remove all the spark-plugs and crank it. Just another random thought. .5 doesn't seem like (to me) enough of a voltage drop to prevent it from turning over at all....

Did your car have a feature where you had to push in the clutch pedal before it would turn the starter? Maybe that's something to look into? Afterthought.

Put some oil in there. Get a socket and a breaker bar on the crank pulley and see if your engine turns. .... The likelyhood of you running your engine with no oil in it and not noticing is really really.....really unlikely. There would be a hell of a lot of noise and resentment coming from under that hood. Let us know if the engine turns. Make sure you have the tranny in neutral when you try and turn the engine. (You're on a hill though, right? Keep that handbrake tight. Chock the wheel.)

Push start it. Turn the key to on, get it rolling, keep it in second, and then pop the clutch. Let it run a bit, up to temp.

Fuel filter I meant.

Should do pretty good on gas. Give it a proper time up. Check timing. Get the tick taken care of. I routinely get 450 miles to a tank highway in my carbie 87 5 speed. Oh and new fuel couldn't hurt.

Niiiiiice!!

Most stress is on the axle when accelerating with the wheel turned. It's a bad axle. Exchange it for another bad axle, keep doing that dance a few more times and eventually you'll get a good one. You could try opening it up before installing it and packing new grease in.

As mentioned, it's very important to try and discern whether it's a knocking as you describe, or the typical 'ticking' that the EA82 engines occasionally develop. The ticking is relatively easy to fix (usually) and is also not really much of a harmful thing. It's just noisy and unnerving if you've never heard it before (as mentioned above) A knocking, that's a different story. Try to explain it better. Your best bet would be to take a video of it or even just an audio recording, and post up a link to it for us to check out for you if you're not sure yourself.

Is there a way to vote this for most helpful post of the year? lol! It was nice of you to take the time to search down all those threads and link them here. That was above and beyond, just wanted to give that some recognition. And this thread has been helpful too, by the way. My car was down for awhile and my brother stole one of my brake lights for his impreza. After I got the car up again I replaced the bulb and since then, EVERY time I hit my brake pedal the stop/brake light indicator flashes on the instrument panel for like a SPLIT second. It's pretty annoying. Never knew this about the ratted wattages, I will have to check that out and see if the proper bulb cures it!

Great little cars. Especially when there's nothing dead in them.

I'll be sure to try and bring the Loyale up to 8k on the way home tonight.