No reflection on your skills as a Wrench but my rule is, when I have a
problem with a vehicle I have just worked on recently, is to go back to what
I just worked on and double check it, plus check everything I may have
disturbed during that previous 'fix'.  Often, I find I've not done something
exactly right or I've 'knocked something loose'
  Don't rule out coincidence, either.  It's possible the new problem is just
that, a totally new problem.  I once had my P-car up on a rack doing some
alignment work and it wouldn't start after...I checked EVERY damn thing I
could think of.that I might have bumped, I racked my own brain trying to
figure what I'd done to make it not start.....until I finally, after about 3
days of looking,  found that my car's Brain..The ECU which lived inside
behind the fire wall well away from what I was working on..that had chosen
the exact time while the car was up on the rack to fail..Coincidence..
  Don Hanson

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 7:16 PM, Keith Ovregaard <kovregaard@gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi all
>
> Just back from a weekend road trip and the VikingWagen like a top
> until I heard an intermittent "knock, knock, knock" from the right
> rear undercarriage. The sound was at the same speed as the wheel
> rotation and it was more pronounced when turning slightly to the
> right. My first thought was that it was a bad CV. But I had just
> serviced all the CV only 3000 miles ago and the wear was very minimal.
> Maybe it's a bad wheel bearing. I've experienced that before on a
> Dodge Van, but the sound was more of a grindy "RRRRrrrrrRRRRrrrrr"
> rather than knocking noise. After about 45 minutes of driving, I
> stopped again to jack up the wheel. I gently put it into gear to spin
> the wheel and no noise. Then I grabbed the tire to check for free play
> and it was a bit sloppy. Hmmmm, bad wheel bearing or loose axel nut?
> Is it supposed to be that sloppy? A local mechanic put a impact wrench
> to it and was barely able to budge it, so I did torque it correctly
> when I last did the rear brake work. After arriving safely back home,
> I pulled the right rear CV axel and test drove with the decoupler
> engaged. No noise, but maybe that is due to the intermittent nature of
> the issue.
>
> At this point, I am leaning towards a bad CV because, even though
> serviced recently, I believe they may be the originals in the rear. At
> almost 150k miles, it's time they would fail, right? Maybe one of the
> cages cracked? What keeps me wondering is the Should I consider myself
> lucky that it did not fail after I drove it another 300 miles on
> mostly curvy steep coastal highway, about 10 miles of moderate off
> road, 1 mile of deep soft sand and forded one stream?
>
> Any thoughts or tests that would tell for sure which part is failing?
>
> Thanks in advance for any help!
>
> Keith O
> 1990 Syncro Westy
>