hi gang!
time for an invitation to play one of our least favorite games;
diagnosis of an intermittent noise via the internet. ;-*
the suspect: Helga; an '85 300D California car, with just over 170K
miles on it that i've had for the last 50K+ miles.
scenario: trunk moderately full of Christmas goodies and luggage,
cruising I5 at around 70+MPH on a trip downstate last week. about 3-4
hours out i started hearing a rhythmic noise that sounded at first like
a tire thumping, but there was no associated vibration to be felt. this
noise gradually became progressively louder; enough that i pulled off to
see if there might be something stuck under the car flapping, or
anything else visibly out of sorts, but peeping and grabbing and shaking
things didn't turn up any likely culprits. after crawling around under
the car for a bit and sitting on the side of the road, i decided to move
the normally dependable beast to a better location, and lo! no noise
whatsoever. we decided to see how close to our destination we could get
and proceeded, only to not have the noise show back up in the next
hour-plus; just enough time to get us over the Grapevine before dark.
to make a long story short, this scenario repeated itself with
varied frequency throughout the next several hundred miles; sometimes
without any noises for hours, and other times coming back in as little
as 40 miles. sometimes once the noise starts it sounds like a u-joint
click-clunking as the vehicle comes to a slow, and other times it makes
almost no noise at all while coming down to a stop.
once the noise shows up it may or may not worsen under load, and may
or may not worsen with speed. sometimes it goes away immediately as soon
as the vehicle comes to a stop, and other times it seems to need to sit
for a while. we ended up making a practice of finding many excuses to
stop on the premise of giving our dog more places to sniff, and that
seemed to keep the noise at bay somewhat.
final note of concern was while driving a short errand around town
last night, a sharp "Clank!" was heard followed immediately by something
that sounded for all the world like a bolt falling out of place; yet
nothing has been found to appear out of place yet by crawling around
under the car. note of concern to me, this was the first time there have
been serious noises that weren't rhythmic, and this showed up while the
car had just started doing errands at sub-35 MPH.
my impression is that this is something related to the driveline
based on the rhythm, but i'm not sure what i might need to look for.
driveline doesn't seem to have any undue play when twisted by hand,
there aren't any tears on the axle boots, and there doesn't seem to be
anything out of the ordinary underneath.
i *hate* intermittent problems. i also hate problems that i can't
repeat with the vehicle at rest, making it impossible to accurately
determine where the noise(s) come from.
any hints, tips, or clues as to what i might look for before i have
to just start addressing the problem shotgunning-style by just replacing
everything that moves down there?
cheers!
e
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