A couple months ago I noticed that on the passenger side, near the front tire a small leak has started. I notice a spot in the driveway every morning about the size of a half dollar. About a month ago I noticed a grinding / scraping sound coming from the front, possibly driver side. I first thought this may be brake pads that need replacement, but after reading the motorvate.ca page about an infamous tranny differential bearing issue, I'm wondering if this is what I'm dealing with.

Anyone have this issue??? Mines a 95 se manual with 160k and original tranny.

What are the tell-tale signs of this differential bearing problem?? I'm going to swap out the front pads and see if that stops the noise (they're due anyway) and pray that I don't have to go to the shop for the bearings.... I'm not sure I'll be willing to drop 1200 to do this and may have to sell the beloved Max.

 

Usually when the diff fail it usually the driver side that fails. One way to tell is to jack up the car a wiggle the axle where it goes into the trans if it moves any your diff bearings have failed. Get it fixed ASAP or pay alot more for a rebuilt one. Here check out my link my diff bearings are failing right now but on the driver side.

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=487294

 

The tell-tale sign is that if you wiggle the driver's side axle where it enters the tranny, and there is ANY play at all. When there is enough play, the seal will also leak.

The passenger side axle can't be wiggled the same way since it has an extra bearing across the engine. It doesn't matter though - once the diff bearings wear down it will show play from both sides.

 

leak on driver sides + whining noise when accelerating

 

Whining noise does not happen in all cases.

 

Ok, well I swapped out the brake pads after work yesterday. The leak on the passanger side is the CV boot that is busted wide open. Grease everywhere. I haven't heard the clicking associated with that yet but I'm going to fix that this weekend.

It seems like the sound of blown bearings is a whining - the sound I'm getting is more of a scraping, metal on metal. With the wheel off and new brake pads, the rotor was still scraping against something. Not sure what the deal is with that, but I'm just happy I'm not looking at a new tranny any time soon. But when I get to that CV boot I'll check the play on the drivers side axel.

Thanks for all of the input!! Glad I'm not looking for a new car this weekend!

 

for some odd reason when I swapped out the rear pads the noise in the front went away...?? Either way, it worked out without me getting a new car or a new tranny. CV boot to come.... is that DIY?? if so how many hrs for my first time?

 

You can do it in a day 1st time. Shop is probly 2hrs tops!

Do it soon coz you're adding grit into your CV every time you drive. I'd give 'em a clean before re-packing them.

 

Or just buy a remanufactured axle.

I've done both - rebooted and replaced. The extra cost of the reman axle is absolutely worth avoiding the mess and tedium of repacking the CV boot. Plus it makes the job brainlessly easy. Rebooting and repacking a CV introduces more places to make a mistake, and you don't save much money.

Dave

 

^^^ what he said... a reman axle is $50 after core...