Educate me

family xj

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 19, 2006
Location
Jacksonville NC
I have a guy that has a 97 Grand Cherokee 4wd obviously. I was looking at his front axle but I have never seen one like that before. It looks like it has some kind of gears running on it on the outside of the axles shafts next to the knuckles. What is the deal with this? I ask this because this guys axle is making some nasty grinding noise. I wanted to just pull the carrier and pion out and seperate the inner and outer axle. looking at his set up it looks like a CV joint. Can I seperate that o is it a CV vice a Universal joint. I am just trying to make his stuff road worthy until we can do an axle swap. Thanks for the info

Doug
 
ABS tone rings. If it's full time 4wd it's got (most likely) cv's. And those could quite possibly be what's making the noise. Pull those first and drive it to see...
:edit: It's a unit bearing hub assembly, it's stupid easy to take apart. Shouldn't take long.
 
I know my xj has the unit bearings off of my sisters junked zj axle right now. I saved the shafts and carrier/ring/pinion too. Too bad I cant use the carrier/ring/pinion, they are 3.73's
 
im assuming its either 93-94 model or V8, those would have CV shafts

you could stick the u-joint stub in there and drive it, and see if that eliminates the problem...

if you put the u-joint shafts in there it will have a jumping action when turning since it is AWD...
 
If it's full-time 4wd, chances are it won't move in high range with the front end disconnected. If it does move, it'll toast the t'case in a heartbeat.
 
Hate to be the one to say it, but with the type questions you have I think you probably ought to let someone else do the work to your friends Jeep.
 
Yeah it's 97 with the awd v8. We took a pic with my buddies camera phone and sent it to Stowe. It definitely has the cv axles shafts. It sounded like the carrier and bearings were all grinding together. It was the worst sound I have heard. Sounded like brakes when they are metal on metal. Are the carriers and gears the same on his axle as they are on TJ/Xj's. I can only imagine they are.

For the record I had a buddy drive around on a 30 front with out the axles. He made it a couple of hours and then going about 25mph around a corner the tires collapsed under his Jeep. It was hilarious. I was thankful it was on a side street in the woods where he was all alone. His hubs seperated. We put the out shafts in and he was good to go. He is still driving on it today. He is going to put 60's in it now.
 
upnover said:
Hate to be the one to say it, but with the type questions you have I think you probably ought to let someone else do the work to your friends Jeep.
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I am with you on this one as I feel pretty ignorant. I can do the work. Just looking to find out what all is interchangeable. I had never seen CV shafts in a Jeep. He needs to be somewhat educated before taking it into the shop. I think we will have to open the front up and see what is grinding. Hopefullly it isn't destroyed but I got a feeling it is.
 
should be the same center section as a TJ, or a low pinion XJ... the CV shafts are only found in the AWD ZJs that I am aware of, but you wouldnt want u-joints in there while trying to turn it on the street...

you could jack up the whole front off the ground and try to spin the tires to see if it makes the noise...
 
paradisePWoffrd said:
should be the same center section as a TJ, or a low pinion XJ... the CV shafts are only found in the AWD ZJs that I am aware of, but you wouldnt want u-joints in there while trying to turn it on the street...
you could jack up the whole front off the ground and try to spin the tires to see if it makes the noise...
Click to expand...

I wanted to work on it last night but I was already working on another one and he had to be at work early this morning.
 
paradisePWoffrd said:
should be the same center section as a TJ, or a low pinion XJ... the CV shafts are only found in the AWD ZJs that I am aware of, but you wouldnt want u-joints in there while trying to turn it on the street...
you could jack up the whole front off the ground and try to spin the tires to see if it makes the noise...
Click to expand...



Why would you not want the ujoints? You wouldn't notice anything different unless you were at or close to full lock.

If you have access to some stub shafts, then you can put those in place of the cv jointed shafts and you don't have to worry about frying the tcase. 96 and up you can do this.
 
xjsaretheway said:
i don't understand...a friend of mine drove a bit without axle shafts in his tj and nothing broke/fell apart.
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You can drive it without axles in, but the outer axle (the splined part) holds the bearing together, the bearing is pressed together and can fail. If you are going 2 mph and it happens no biggie, the tire and hub folds under, if you are going 60 mph it maybe worse. I know it might not happen, but you can die or kill someone when you loose the wheel.
 
I have a friend with a 99 TJ, while we were wheeling, he broke the left outer stub shaft., the nut and splines fell into the center cap, and no one knew it had broke (he has a lockright so the other side was still pulling). About 2 mile from the woods at 60mph the bearing came unglued, sending him across the double yellow just missing oncoming traffic, and through someones front yard, just missing the mailbox and some trees. Luckily no one was hurt (family was in jeep).

Long story short, he no longer has center caps on the front :)
 
This kid has not been back around nor has he contacted me. I can only assume he took it to get fixed. We probably could have saved him a lot of money.
 
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