Any ideas on what could be causing my half-shaft to repeatedly go bad? Well ok twice, but in a very short time span. As in twice since May..

I have a 97 Accord 2.2, 5 speed which I bought in haste back in May. Once I got it home I found several problems I hadn't originally spotted. One being torn outer CV boots. Not knowing how long they had been this way I decided to wait until they started clunking before I replaced them. Shortly there after they went bad and I replace both sides (outers). A few weeks later the passenger side started clunking again. It was an Auto-Zone LLT reman half-shaft(they didn't have new). I figured no biggie I'll just swap in under warranty, but sure enough two weeks later its clunking again. Also I notice a clunking/knocking noise under load at highway speed. In other words if I take my foot off the gas or depress the clutch it goes away. I figure this is related to the half-shaft except for the fact that I noticed this immediately after installing the half-shaft and the clunking started a few weeks later. My other thought was that the noise at highway speed could be a throw out bearing and un-related.

So really my question is did I really get two bad half-shafts in a row (quite possible) or is some other component putting stress on this side and causing the half-shaft to fail? I asked because the half-shafts seemed tight out of the box and I know I've got some sort of suspension issue because they car seems to wander a little a highway speed too.

Whenever or where ever I search on the issue the answer is usually poorly rebuilt half-shafts. I’ll buy that but I don’t have a lot of experience replacing them and wanted to see if there are any other ideas out there.

Lastly I’ll say to the best of my knowledge these were install properly. I made sure the shaft was popped all the way into the tranny before reassembling the rest so I don’t think I’m binding these up on the install.

 

Check out those engine mounts

 

You know I did see that when searching here and now that I think about it that make a lot of sense. Thanks for the idea.