Farquea

I hear a crunching/clunking sound when making tight turns, its worse turning left but also present when turning the opposite direction. From what I've read so far i'm thinking it is the CV axle but am I right in thinking there would be a CV axle either side of the car? I've also looked on Rockauto for a CV axle in the hope of getting a price and maybe having a go at fixing this myself but I can't find anything, would this be called something else.

At the same time if you don't think it is the CV axle and could be something else, i'd love to avoid going down the wrong alley on this.

acmoc

steering left the clunk will come from the right axle
steering right the clunk will come from the left axle.
If these are your symptoms and everything else is copacetic. It's likely the cause.
Buy them at autozone because they tend to go bad after 2 years, and autozone gives lifetime warranty.
Buy a ball joint remover from harbour freight and it makes the job a whole lot easier.

Torque spec on the 32 mm axle nut is 125 ft lbs I believe.
It's about a 30 minute job with the right tools.

Sometimes the new axle is hard to pop in. I put the c clip from the old axle on the new one, in this case.

Last step is to stake the axle nut.

Farquea

OK thanks, I guess I'll replace both then, anything else worth replacing related while I'm at it.

I'll have to find a detailed step by step guide as I'm very much a novice but hopefully I can figure it out. I'm in Canada and so don't think we have AutoZone here, by any chance do you know where I could find the part number for the CV axles?

acmoc

From my experience, and having replaced lots of parts on mine. I advise only to replae things if they need to be. No need to spend money.
Most parts can be replaced easily enough independently.

I don't know the part number but just by make and model, any store should be able to help you. If it's the stock engine.

Tyson

Just jack the car up and on jackstands and figure it out .

If it's coming from inside, it's just the plastic steering column cover rubbing the u joint.

Farquea

I'm looking to buy both left and right CV axles but I want to make sure I'm buying the right thing as I've been a bit confused with the fact that my car is a 1990 CX hatchback yet even Wikipedia doesn't list a CX. It's a 5 speed manual so I can see there are some for the 4 and 5 speed to choose from but i'm unsure about the difference in '23 Splines' and '26 Splines OBJ'.

If someone can help me identify which 2 are for my car that would be awesome just to give me peace of mind!

Tyson

the 23 splines would be for an HF with smaller brakes. i doubt your CX is configured that way. so go with the 26 spline.

Farquea

Thanks, i'll go for the 26 spline in that case and fingers crossed!

88CRsXy

Farquea

I'll take your advice although on Rockauto I see one for the 'Right' but i'd have assumed they were identical and not side specific and i'd just want 2 of the Beck/Arnley seals no?

acmoc

I've never changed those.
buy them, but if ot's not leaking, I'd leave it untouched

Farquea

So my axles arrived and I had a go at replacing these, it took me a lot longer than I had hoped though! I eventually managed to get the driver side axle out, it was in a bad way! but in order to get the new axle in, I ran into trouble trying to get the lower control arm out. After taking the castle nut out I banged and banged on the arm with a hammer but just couldn't get it out! I then tried taking the suspension arm out that is just above it to the right but had the exact same issue in not being able to get it completely out once the castle nut was removed. Short of giving up I went to Home Depot and bought the biggest hammer I could find and after some big swings and some levering with a large screwdriver i finally got both arms completely free so that I was able to move the brake system out of the way enough to be ale to seat the new axle properly, success at least i thought.......

Unfortunately though when putting everything back together i ran into issues with both castle nuts. On the lower control arm, when screwing it back on with my fingers the nut gets half way up the thread and stops. If i use a socket on it, i can see that the bolt just starts spinning along with the nut. On the suspension arm, it looks like In my crazed hammering i smashed the bolt and have wrecked it enough that i cant get the nut to catch on the thread.

I've attached pictures, if anyone has any ideas i'd really appreciate it. I'm thinking worst case for the suspension arm i just have to replace it? For the lower control arm, i can try a new nut but the current one looks good so i'm not confident that will fix it. Suspension arm
Lower control arm

Tyson

You almost always have to replace the nut, or rethread the nut .the threads get messed up in the process of tightening. It's common .I carry taps to rethread the nuts for this reason.

acmoc

You need this to remove them, hammering it kills the threads

https://www.harborfreight.com/3-4-qu...tor-99849.html

Farquea

So, in my learnings i've realised the smaller ball joint was the outer tie rod, so given how easy they look to replace and how cheap they are, that i'm just going to replace them while i'm down there doing the axles and so as not to have to deal with the damaged thread. If I'm doing the axles and tie rods, is there anything else worth replacing while I'm at it which might be quick and affordable?

For the other ball joint that goes into the lower control arm, can anyone explain what that piece is and how easy it is to replace as i'm trying to find a new 17mm castle nut (apparently its not so easy to find) but i'm worried the nut isn't the problem and its the actual ball joint thread, and given that as soon as the nut hits any kind of friction that I can see the ball joint piece spinning which I assume isn't normal, i'm worried that it may be damaged and better off to just replace it if I can.

I've also now invested in a ball joint separator! I wish I had known about that before reading the guide on here which went with the hammering technique

acmoc

lower ball joint is difficult to replace.
You have to remove the knuckle from the car and take it to be presseed.

Tyson

its normal for a used balljoint. but doesnt mean its bad.

if you want to replace it, go ahead. a new nut and cleaning up the threads will make it tighten up. if not, use an impact wrench to help it.

you check the condition of the balljoint by checking for play. if theres play, you replace. if you dont know it was ever replaced, ok it probably should be...

a balljoint tool is nice when it works. the hammer method always works (hit the knuckle, not the balljoint) and as long as you dont bork it and hit the balljoint, its my preferred method.

acmoc

correct, if you use the hammer method. You don't hit the balljoint. Hit the lca or something.
I never do it this way so i don;t know what to hit

Farquea

I managed to finally get the nut back on by following someone's advice on a new thread to jack up the control arm right by the ball joint, this worked perfectly!

Farquea

So update on this, it's finally job done as far as the axles are concerned! Slow progress but I hit a lot of bumps in the road and learned a lot but to happy to have it all done as its really my very first time working on a car like this. Had problems with both lower control arm ball joints and for the second one I had to buy an impact wrench on someones advice and it went on easily. Both new outer tie rods are on now too so I tightened everything up on both sides and put her back on the ground and fired her up. The car's not insured so I just did a few laps in my small underground parking and all seems good, There was an initial sound turning which seemed almost like something settling and the brake went spongy initially but then everything seemed normal and working well as i did a few turns at low speed for a few minutes.

I do have 2 questions remaining, when I took the axles out, fluid ran out which I assumed to be transmission fluid. Before packing up today I loosened the transmission drain plug and tried to find the fill plug (didn't succeed) in preparation for the next job. The transmission fluid i saw run from the drain plug before i put it back in didnt seem like the same fluid that ran out as I removed the axles (but i may have been). Would it been transmission fluid, it seemed a lot thinner and clearer than the fluid that came out of the drain plug, i just wanted to check that a drain of the transmission fluid and re-fill will leave me all good.

Also on the big huge bastard of a nut on the wheel axle end, what is the best way to bend the nut down? I assume it's meant to be bent down to prevent the nut from slipping off if loosened?