Kingfisher

Call SOA and raise hell.

Just keep an eye on it. If it's jacked, you're gonna know pretty quick. You'll end up with a gear oil leak PDQ. If you were relatively gentle when you removed the original shaft and re-stabbed the new one you could be ok. No way to know until you drive it a little.

The best deal going around here is Carquest. I've picked up 2 from them. The 2nd one was on Friday. ~$74 and they have had them in stock both times.

Roger that. Thanks for the info.

Yeah, I was thinking that was a "rattle" which I have as well, but this is mechanical.

Sorry for the late response guys. Went down to the coast for a couple of days and I'm just now getting back online. I'm sure you guys are right about #1. I believe that it is in fact the blower. I think that it chirps when it's running then when you shut it off, after it spins down it starts to go quiet, then all I can assume is that it start to freewheel from incoming air from the road and starts to chirp again? Just a guess. The latter noise, who the heck knows. Something that is probably under vacuum until you shut the car off. Not sure. Meanwhile I'll do some checking on how much of a PITA it is to replace the blower. Unfortunately I now have a howling noise under the hood when the car is cold. Sounds like a pulley or idler that needs to be lubed. After it's warm, no prob. Oh well, atleast it's paid for. lol Shotokan, thanks for the link. I couldn't find anything on a search but that's definitely it and is basically what I suspected, only I didn't know the technicalities of it.

So I've got a relatively recent development on the '05 LGT. I've got two new noises from the dash that I can't nail down. These are not rattles. Whatever they are they're mechanical or similar in nature. I searched the forum but maybe my terms were no good because I couldn't really find anything that matched. Noise 1 - This is an intermittent sound that I haven't been able to tie to the AC either. It's an intermittent chirp, that again, hate to coin some a silly animal reference but it literally sounds like a baby bird chirping lol. AC, recirc, no AC, I haven't been able to pin it down to any particular function within the dash itself. Noise 2 - Happens when you shut the car off. You a noise that sounds like a rodent is trying to scratch it's way out of the dash. It's very odd, and that's about the only way I know to describe it. Sounds like it's coming from right behind the radio/ac unit. It goes on for about 30 seconds or so, then it's done but it does it every time. AC, no AC, doesn't matter.

lol Thank goodness I'm not the only one that feels this way. I paid roughly the same through Carquest and it comes with a lifetime warranty. Not only that, you don't have to get dirty. Why bother.

You can take it off by hand but you have to bend it back straight where it's staked. You'll see where it has a little notch in it and the corners are folded over. However, if you have an impact wrench, it'll take it off regardless of whether you bend it back or not.

We always referred to them as "bushing killers" or "bushing destroyers" when I was younger. If you can separate a join like that, any joint like that on any car without a separator fork, you'll be better off. That said, I still have one and most folks who do this kind of thing should have one in their toolbox... just in case.

I'm also in the "replace the halfshaft" group. I can't get a new unit for $75-$80, it's about a 15 minute job to swap it out with air tools, and I don't have to get grease etc. all over myself and everything else. Plus, the replacement is warrantied.

When all else fails, use brute force?

I had the same problem. I slid under the car and grabbed the halfshaft where my arms were in a good position to get good leverage then worked it back and forth while pushing it back into the gearbox as hard as I good. It didn't take too long to get it that way. You just have to fiddle with it.

Considering the labor charge to replace and repack the boot, to me atleast it seems like it would be a lot easier just replacing the whole axle. A lot less messy too. To swap out an axle takes an hour, maybe less and you don't have to deal with all of the grease. Considering my car had about 75k on it anyway (not a lot in the overall scheme of things) it was a no brainer for me to just swap out the axle when the boot failed, and it was EASY! Now, assuming I don't start shelling out boots left and right, if it failed again in a year or two or whatever, I'd do the same thing again, i.e. the whole axle. I guess if I was in an area where the conditions were more conducive to causing the boots to crack/tear/whatever and I was having to do them more frequently, I'd go the route of just replacing the boot. However, if you're only talking about every 60-80k...

Viss1, I'm guessing you probably trashed the outer seal, like I did. Seems to be relatively easy to do.

Viss1, I'm guessing you probably trashed the outer seal, like I did. Seems to be relatively easy to do.

Heh... that IS the secret. For mine, I was able to get it in 85% of the way. It was the last little bit that took the most work. In my case I was able to lay under the car, grab it with both hands and put some stink on it. Seems to me that I did rock it back and forth in the process. In the process I ended up shelling out the seal on the drivers side, but that was easy enough to fix.

Claw, I'm down in Texas but I did a bunch of traveling in recent years to Edmonton, Windsor, Sault Sainte Marie and Ottawa for business. My company had operations in all of those towns until the economy tanked and the exg. rate flipped. We had a brand new bldg in Edmonton on the edge of town, before that we were in the Telus bldg downtown. Anyway, good luck on your axle replacement. Hope it goes easily. Mine was pretty straight forward, sans seal problems of course.

Bah, you're just hard on'em. Just kidding. Duralast is Autozone, right? I don't buy anything from those clowns anymore. Glad to hear that the ones you got from Carquest are holding up ok. Honestly, with the kiddo now the LGT doesn't see nearly as many miles as it used to so it'll probably be good until such time as we dump it on something bigger. Seems like we're always taking my 4-door truck these days. The mileage isn't nearly as good, but it's a lot roomier.

What was the problem? Boots or the joints themselves? I picked mine up at Carquest. Came with a lifetime warranty, so if it shells out I'm not too worried about it except for the labor piece of course which now that I know how to do it, wont amount to much.

For what it's worth I sourced the axle locally at several places and the average price was about $75. Considering you don't have to do a bunch of disassembly/reassembly and don't have to get completely filthy in the process, I'd go with the full swap rather than the rebuild. That's the direction I went anyway. Edmonton resident? Love that town. Awesome place. Considering all of the PST and GST your prices will be higher probably, but it's still a lot less hassle IMO to replace it all as one sealed assembled unit. Having gone the trashed seal route, I'd make sure you have the seal(s) on hand. As long as you've got the thing apart you might as well replace them too.

Don't sweat it man, appreciate the offer though. I was able to find both the o-ring and the axle seal at the dealer right up the road. I bought the o-ring, did not replace it. If a problem crops up, I'll do so but I don't expect it to. As for the old seal, I got it started with a big flatbladed screwdriver taking care not to scratch the housing itself and with a little bit of force it popped right out. As for putting it back in, I oiled it and worked the new seal in with my fingers as far as I could then used the axle nut socket and some light taps from a hammer to tap it the rest of the way in. Seated fine. Re-stabbing the axle took a bit of doing, I wasn't able to do it from the side of the car. Had to crawl underneath and manhandle the thing from right behind where it goes into the gearbox. Finally did get it back together though. Took it for a test spin for a few miles, brought it home and checked everything for leaks and all appears to be well. I'll keep an eye on it but I think we're good.

Attemped this yesterday. A full halfshaft replacement that is. With the endlink disconnected the balljoint broke loose easily. Strangely, the bolt for the balljoint had an almost imperceptible bend in it. The old shaft came out relatively easy, no drama, but the new one didn't want to go in. After some feeling around and a look with a flashlight I realized we shelled out the seal in the process. The spring from the seal had come loose and was jacking up the reinstall. I pulled the seal last night but no on one local appears to have one. I snagged one from O'Reilly's last night but it's wrong. The center hole diameter is about 1/8" too small if not more and it doesn't have a little flange protrusion where it butts up against the halfshaft. Is this thing a dealer only item? I need to buy it over the counter (for time), but Autozone, O'Reilly and Advance Auto don't have it. Any other suggestions? Fortunately the dealer is close, I just thought I'd ask.

Just found out at the lube changer place a couple of weeks back that the pass. boot is cracked so I came straight over and did the usual search & read. Looks like the whole assembly now at Autozone is only $60 and comes with a lifetime warranty. Am I missing something or shouldn't that be the only way to go in my situation? Also seems like it'll be a little easier less/messy. If you're just going to replace the whole assembly, are there any other tricks/shortcuts to make the job easier?

I got some clarification on the ECU swap from my dealer today. I went to pick my car up (which was there all week) and the black LGT which has been there for almost 3 weeks was still there. Apparently my LGT because of the build date or whatever, takes a different ECU revision than the black on they had there. His is on backorder, mine is not. The rim saga continues. I needed the car back and SOA was still stonewalling so I paid for the replacement. Meanwhile the original is in the garage and I should be posting pictures some time tomorrow. The discussion with SOA is ongoing and is far from over. I talked to their customer service line today, then they followed up with the dealer. I know what the dealer told them (because I talked to them when I picked up the car). The dealer told them they'd never seen anything like it, and were dumbfounded. I'm hoping that works in my favor.