rear wheel bearings, struts, springs, ball joints, tie rod ends, front suspension arms, etc. etc. I've had the car off the ground for a few weeks trying to fit various wrongly shipped/purchased. It's an 88 90Q from the first 2 months of production so there are plenty of strange parts that don't follow the generally accepted chassis split info. All of this, coupled with trying to get this thing put together for my friend who is being shipped off to Iraq (this coming Monday) and wants to give it to his daughter for her 16th bday before he leaves, is stressing me out a bit. I finally got her off the stands last night and was going to take her for a spin. I made it about 40 feet down my alley. I heard two light 'clunks' first. I quickly thought, 'Not to worry, it's probably just the springs settling down into their perches'. Then, as I approached the turnout to the street and gave it some gas...nothing to the wheels.....a spinning sound. I pulled over, hit the diff switch and it did lock the rear wheels in and I slowly drove it back to the garage. I've been up for a few days working on this and my brain isn't functioning correctly so I need some magical, happy-style advive. I did a search in these and other archives and found nothing. I'm sure I was using the wrong key words. Anyhooo....any advice greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Bryan

 

Did you perhaps dis-asseble one front CV joint and not re-assemble it correctly?

 

sly leaning towards that conclusion though. The car functioned fine before I touched it I only disassembled one front outer cv to replace the boot. I repacked it and replaced all of the parts but left the old circlip at the end of the axle on. I'm thinking that has to be the problem. I hope that it's that simple and I haven't f'd up the axle or cv with this self applied lesson. Finding parts for this car has been a major PITA.

Is there a penetrating circlip spray that I can buy? You know, the kind that you can spray at the boot and it replaces any defective circlip within the boot.... Wishful thinking. Maybe an x-ray spray? Spray it all over a suspected problem area...stand back, beer in hand, slowly walk round sprayed area, stare intently, on occasion stop briefly and nod knowingly, open another beer and order can of spray-fix for the area. You know, so I don't have to take everything apart to diagnose the problem...

Thank you for the observation on the cv joint, I do appreciate it.

Any other ideas?

Thanks again,

Bryan

 

nope, sounds like something with your cv joint/axle

 

feet with the rear diff locked and there were no evil sounds. When I disengaged the rear diff and tried driving it back and forth, there were bad sounds. Surprisingly (to me at least) the sounds are coming from the rear. I'll pull the axle and put the new circlip on and cross my fingers but now I can't help but think that I somehow screwed up something in the rear area too....

 

hand while holding one of it's cv's in the other hand until I found that one in the rear was screwed. It was a rear inner one. Of course it was $180 and nearly unobtanium . Anyhooo...all is well now.
Thanks for the tips,
Bryan