Need suggestions. Rear end "clunking"

[chrismac]

Ok so looked under my car today, hanger bearing has a bit of play nothing i'm worried about but the clunk is from play in the diff. I'm able to rotate the driveshaft a bit each way. When it hits each way i hear the clunk. So how much play should are rear ends have? My car is an 89 don't know if the newer ones are tighter or not.

lol i just finished dealing with this problem on my 91 gtst tonite....i hade like 3/4 inch play in the driveshaft/diff and when i pulled away from a stop i would get a clunk in the rearend so i pulled the rear diff out and one of the bearing caps was loose and bent a bolt...so i hade to replace the bolts and now i only have about 1/16 play...so i would deff check that out


as for the guys that want to shim up the diff (DO NOT GO BIG) I did the same thing to mine and if u go to big u will get wineing from the diff everytime u let off the gas(really anoying and alot of metal shavings)

every diff has different size shimms in it ..mine had a .8mm and a 1.0mm in it and i wanted it to fully lock up so i added another 1.30mm shimm in and that gave me wineing in the diff so i hade to go smaller so i just took out the .8mm and put in a 1.20mm in it and it runs awsome now, good and tight

so i hope this helps u find ur problem

[RixR32]

You guys with the vibrations, just replace the hanger bearing. It's cheap enough, about $90 shipped from Japan, and is a common item to replace.
I had the same "vibration", kinda like the warped rotor thing, and whole car kinda shook at 90-100km/h.
I replaced the hanger bearing (and checked u-joints) and all was perfectly smooth again.
It didn't feel very loose when I wiggled it by hand either so it's kinda deceiving.
I just tried the cheap fix first and it worked, suprisingly
Going on 2 years now, still ok.


Rick