Diagnosing Jeep Front Axle Noise

Jennifer’s Jeep has been making a horrible grinding noise in the front lately. We tried putting it on jack stands and running it but we really could not tell where the noise was coming from.

There was some end play evident in the pinion so, since there has been a rash of pinion bearing failures around my shop lately we looked into that as a cause. I tried tightening the pinion nut but that did not help at all.

I finally pulled the front drive shaft and then removed both front axels from the housing. I replaced then with two wheel drive stub shafts. This eliminated the drive shaft, front U joints and differential bearings as potential sources of the noise.

The noise is still there. She has to live without 4wd for a bit while we wait for the new wheel bearing to arrive. While both wheel bearings feel fine when rotated by hand, one must be making noise when the weight of the Jeep is on it.

She also noticed that sometimes in hard right turns the noise will suddenly go away. This is another indication that a wheel bearing is the cause of the noise.
[phpbay]jeep hub, 10[/phpbay]