Hey. I have a 94 gsr with 230K+ miles, 17" wheels and low profile tires. I have been noticing a pop some times in curves.

I noticed when I was under it changing the oil that both outer cv boots are busted into two pieces, so I assumed it was the cv joint making the pop. However, people are telling me that the cv joints will pop continuously and at any speed every time I turn the wheel.

I want to disagree and say that it's the cv joints, but I don't know enough about it to say.

It doesn't pop in every curve and it only pops once or twice. Speed doesn't seem to affect whether or not it pops; sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't.

What does it sound like to you guys?

Thanks.

 

Change your axles!

 

Thanks for the response.
I think so too. Man I dread doing it though.

Nice car in the avatar mouab18c1

 

ball joints?

 

My EF hatch started doing this when the CV joints were going bad. At first it was only on sharp turns and a few clicks. It progressively got worse to where it was a rapid clicking on any turn.

 

Definitely change the axles asap. They will not last long with torn boots. With that many miles on the car, check the ball joints, tie rod ends, and even the wheel bearings while your at it.

 

Wheel bearings are simple to check. Just jack up the car and try moving the tires without spinning them, there should be no play in them. If there is then the wheel bearing for that wheel is bad. But again with torn boots axles will not last, once all the grease comes out; it's pretty much garbage. Im pretty positive its just your axles. They're fairly simple to change unless you have no experience then start learning.LOL We all started somewhere

 

Wheel bearings don't make a popping noise, more like a grinding/high pitched whining noise

 

Check your mounts, especially the trans mounts - the trans mounts often cause the popping sound/drivetrain slop. It's also more than likely the cause of the broken axles. The axles most likely broke because the engine is torquing and moving a lot more than usua under load due to the bad mounts, thus twisting/loading the axles and thrashing the CV joints.

I'm speaking from experience on this one, I promise you the mounts are worth a check.

 

Thanks for all the responses. It sounds like I need to go ahead and change those axles.
I would like to go ahead and replace bearings, ball joints, tie rod ends, and misc. bushings while I'm in there but I'm on a tight budget. I'm having to put the K&N cold air intake on hold because of the axles already.

Thanks again for all the input. Great forum.

 

Please check your mounts too it may be the ultimate cause of the axle failure. Good luck

 

Which mounts should I look at?

 

From my experience, if the mounts were loose the car would shake when you accelerate.

 

x2

 

I would change the axles or rebuild them before blaming this on the engine mounts. The cracked/broken cv boot, that you noticed previously, likely caused an axle bearing to fail. While your changing the axle, visually inspect all of the mounts. It's easy to tell if they need to be replaced.

 

fist check the easy things check if your tires are egg headed those make popping noises dont go all out think simple then go to the harder stuff

 

Thanks a lot for all the input.

I decided to go ahead and drive it some more to check it out. I figured if the axles are going then they are gone anyway. What I noticed is that the popping only happens when I corner hard enough the raise or lower the front-end, and when I hit bumps. I also tried turning really sharp to see if I could get the CV joints to pop and I can't, so I'm pretty sure the popping is in the shocks or the control arm (or something like that)

I don't weigh enough to get it to pop by bouncing the front-end, so I'm going to have to get it off the ground and break into it to find it.

After reading the posts here, I'm going to check all the mounts and bushings, and replace everything that I can afford to after I take care of the main problem. I'm also going to go ahead and replace the axles if I can. If not, I think I'll try those easy-on CV boots and hope not too much damage has been done. The joints are still holding "some" grease.

As SoTexDC2 and keepinitrehaal mentioned, with the miles on this car, it probably needs a lot of suspension help, so I'm going to do all I can afford to while I'm in there. I still hope to have a little money left to get into some performance upgrades. At least a cold-air intake (recomendations?)

I hope you all stick around for a while. It's great to have such a resource while I'm getting my feat wet and bringing this thing back to life.

 

Now that sounds more like a swaybar issue. Check the swaybar endlinks and bushings for wear. They are easy to install and relatively inexpensive, it wouldn't hurt to start there. It could still be a ball joint, or the axle joint giving you grief though. Only one way to find out.

As for the Axles, if they still do have a decent amount of grease in them it's possible that they are fine. I would re-boot them ASAP. Boots are a LOT cheaper than complete axles.

 

Thanks again SoTexDC2. I had the wheel off in the driveway here today and pried around on it with a tire tool (obviously not much of a shop here) and I didn't notice anything giving at all as far as the wheel bearing or axle went. I also didn't notice that the ball-joint looked bad and didn't seem to have any play.

I pried around on the trans mount and I was able to lift the transmission some, but I'm not sure if it was "normal" though.

The one thing that I did notice, as you mentioned, was that my swaybar bushing was cracked. It wasn't completely busted up but has a very noticeable crack in the ?rubber?. So, also as you said, since this is a cheap thing to swap out, I'm going to try to get it done tomorrow and see what happens.

Just a thanks to those helping me out, an update for anyone following, and hopefully helpful info for anyone searching a similar problem.