• Welcome to the Contour Enthusiasts Group, the best resource for the Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique.

    You can register to join the community.

192,000 miles and a bad sound from the front drivers side wheel....

seabass_00svt

CEG'er
Joined
Apr 24, 2006
Messages
125
Location
Michigan
i have a 2000 Contour SVT that has 192,XXX miles on the body and around 70k (approx) on the motor....anyways motor runs great its fun and it was cheap....i have driven it 10k miles trouble free since i got it and most of the suspension parts were replaced (multiple times?) by the first owner....heres the bad....

i drove it fine like 85 on the highway no jitter, good alignment...and was merging from 23 to 94 when i felt a funny pull in the wheel for a second and then it was gone....got to work and worked all day...then i backed out of my parking spot and heard a clunk from the drivers side front wheel....

me and my dad drove it around the parking lot and it was clunking every 10 seconds and you could see the whole wheel move at least a 1/4" when it happened....so i work like 1/2 mile from my apartment so i drove it (slow w/ hazards) to my complex and on the way it got majorly worse....

it only clunks when under (any) power and turning the steering wheel and is much more pronounced when the clutch is halfway out (torque has something to do with it)...my dad thinks its a universal joint in the axel or driveshaft....anyways the car is almost undrivable...

any ideas what it is....my bro is pretty handy and he's done tie rods and other susp stuff...thanks

Hans
 
You can do this if you are replacing the axle as an assembly.

If you(your bro?) feel confident enough to remove the tires, and rotor, then pull the hub off (like you are going to replace your wheel bearing), then undo a couple more bolts you can do this.

There is a pretty useful "duratec maintenance" faq in the forum by the same name. It has pretty much any/all major or common repairs outlined. If all else fails, autozone.com has the procedure listed as well.
 
my brother is pretty good at working on cars and i have done brakes and rebuilt the front end of a civic ....where would be the best place to get the axel assembly...rockauto??....there seem to be 10 options with pricing ranging from $60 to $230...i'm thinking its the $200+ parts...

anybody know what parts (brand or part number) i need to replace the axel...
 
Hanzo

Give Stu in service a call at gene butman, tell him your a friend and from CEG and see what he can do for you on a new OEM part
 
I had scottie over there do one for me in an afternoon... wasnt too expensive. Its not hard to do yourself, but it was last december and I had no will to do it myself :)
 
I'm thinking cv axel. When mine went, it was clunking pretty bad. Its not hard to do and the write up is very useful. I had a bad experience with a reman axel, so I went with a new GCK axel from autozone. Lifetime warranty for $160.00 is not bad at all. I'm not sure what your price would because I have an atx.
 
alright i got it down to the axle following the hub how-to in the maintainence forum....and found out where the broken cv joint was...the inner cv joint next to the trans...we pulled on the axle and it came apart at the inner joint where it broke...

the rest of the damn thing won't come out....i looked around on the internet and it said that the thing should just come out with a gentle prying motion...then i stumbled across a FWD axel puller that is part of the loan-a-tool program at Autozone....do i need this??? i really need to get the car back together....

http://www.autozone.com/in_our_stores/loan_a_tool/wheel_axle/axle_puller.htm
 
Back
Top