Ok Motorheads, hopefully someone can point me in the right direction for a new problem with our ’02 Monte.

Recently it’s started making a noise, seems to be from the front end, primarily upon deceleration. It sounds like what I would term a ‘gear noise’. Not very loud, but definitely not normally there. It is proportional to speed: as the car slows down, the noise goes down at the same pace. Seems like it is drivetrain related. I’ve checked all the fluids – oil, tranny, power steering, brake – all normal. The only thing I can see out of the ordinary is a little dripping that wasn’t there before. It looks like a very slow drip from somewhere near the front left (driver’s side). I haven’t identified the source. Dark fluid (darker than the engine oil), oily, smells like gear oil.

Engine has about 159K miles; tranny about 70K miles on it. Front end has never had any issues. Hubs are original.

Any thoughts?

 

Cv axle, boot possibly leaking fluid. Thats my guess...

 

Could be a wheel bearing going bad

 

Thanks, guys. I'll crawl under it tomorrow and see if the CV axle boot is the source of the leak. And I need to look at my maintenance manual tonight to see how tough both of those jobs would be. Never had to mess with either yet.

 

can you describe the sound any more? how does the coolant level look?

 

CV boot and bearings should be nice and easy. An hour on both sides for each job.

 

Very possible it is a bearing, I put my walkthrough from last week in the 6th gen How-to

 

I was thinking bearing as well. Good luck on finding out what's wrong.

 

Thanks, guys. I had a look today and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. No leaks apparent from the axle boots. Since it's my wife's daily driver, I may get some diagnosing help early next week from a local shop.

Mike - I'll check out your write-up on the bearings.

 

Shop says passenger side hub assembly / bearing is bad. Going to let them do this repair. I don't have the time to tackle it.

Also discovered that my lower intake gasket has a tiny leak. Crap... I replaced upper / lower intake manifold gaskets last year. But the lower gasket gave me significant grief; I had a hard time getting it seated properly. First time doing that job; learned a lot. So I suppose it's not a big surprise that it has a problem. I just dread doing it all over again. At least this time I know better what I'm doing. Ugh...

The only good news is that the lower gasket leak may be causing the P0171 code (Bank 1 too lean) that keeps popping up periodically. Would be nice to get rid of that once and for all.