Clicking/Ticking Under Acceleration
 

I've only noticed this today, and already I hate it.



My car is making a noise that

• Sounds kinda like an exhaust leak, a quiet repetitive tick/click. Sounds kinda like a diesel truck running alongside the car, but quiet. Turn up the radio and you'd miss it. Drive on a highway that makes the tires sing and it can't be heard
  
• comes during on-throttle operation. Not when coasting/decelerating. My friend made it sound when downshifting some strange way but I wasn't paying attention sorry
  
• Can't hear it when the car isn't moving. idle sounds normal, revving sounds normal.
  
• Is dependent on vehicle speed, not engine speed, but the quality of the noise changes with different gears in use
  
• Doesn't get worse when turning either direction (checked in a parking lot next to a building)
  
• Is hard to localize. From the front, sounded like driver side to me, my friend couldn't really tell which side
  
• Can be heard *better* in the cabin with windows up
  

Notably:

• The car has 212k miles on it
  
• Only one wheel bearing *ever* had to be replaced, front passenger
  
• She runs (as my friend who drove it to listen said) "surprisingly strong for how it looks"
  
• Axles are old-ish, would have to check the maint. log book to see how old. I know there is at least one split boot
  
• Exhaust manifold was replaced once with the newer (with slits between runners) style by Hyundai ages ago
  
• Plugs and wires are pretty recent, oil is due for a change, but it has oil which didn't look too bad on the dipstick
  
• Gear oil was recently changed (Redline, again) and the drained oil looked normal.
  
• The driver/front wheel doesn't rock top/bottom when the car is jacked up - but the one bad wheel bearing didn't either, because it was trying to seize up solid (didn't jack/wiggle check passenger side yet)
  
• With the driver's front wheel jacked up the tire has a noise when rotated by hand that is probably brakes rubbing
  

Suspects:

• wheel bearing
  
• axle
  
• brake pads (doubtful)
  
• final drive gear or output shaft :(
  

If the car doesn't explode and it doesn't get drastically worse, this will be looked-at this weekend or sooner, time allowing. Please shoot me any suggestions and/or ideas you may have.



updated with slightly better comments from this morning's drive.

Timing belt or lash adjuster maybe? My tiburon just started same thing a couple weeks back...



I'm at 99k got the timing belt, need to put it in before snow hits.. If it still ticks its gonna encourage me to clean the lash adjusters and do the exhaust cam swap lol

Hmm, I know it's speed dependent but the load on the engine changes in different gears as well.



Very different areas but CV joint and timing belt idler pulley are my two initial thoughts.



If you or a buddy have a GoPro put it in a few locations under the hood and see if you can find a place where it's noticeably louder.

My bets are on CV joint.



Just reread your initial post. You said you have a split boot on an axle. I'd say that should be your number one lead to follow. Doesn't take long for dirt to get in there and Jack up those splines.



So, my bet still stands. :)

I made some cell phone videos but they had potato quality audio so i deleted em. I'll try again to get a decent recording.



I can definitely hear my noise on part throttle, especially uphill. I can also just barely hear it coasting. Full engine load or engine speed over 4KRPM are too loud to hear the noise.



I spent some quality time with the car and I think it's either my standards are too low for axles, or the axles are bad, or it's something surprising and expensive.



No DTCs or long term data stored in the computer, according to my OBD2 handheld scanner



I drained out 800ml of gear oil into a clear beaker and happily it did NOT look like aluminum paint. Transaxle oil is clear and the appropriate funky pink color for Redline. I ran a magnet through it and didn't pick up anything. There were a few ~1mm black flecks in the bottom of the beaker but they could have come from the car, which is dirty underneath, or maybe from not cleaning the beaker first (oops).



With the brake calipers pushed loose enough to let the wheels turn, but still dragging a little, both front wheels rotate smooth and easy as each other, and no roughness can be felt, even through a hand resting on the spring. No rocking/play was felt. Back wheels rorate smoothly also. I'm thinking the wheel bearings are probably good.



There is a circumferential cracking around the passenger side inner axle boot, but all the boots are intact, with no grease spray.



The axles are about as tight as each other. With the wheel removed, there is ever so little play in the joints, maybe a couple of degrees slack in rotation with a small clunk when changing by hand between forward and reverse rotation of the axle (by turning the brake rotor by manually). The drivers axle stays tight into the gearbox, the passenger side has maybe 2-4mm of slip in and out, but clinks against a hard stop, still retained by the c-clip. If there's supposed to be absolutely ZERO play then the axles are F'd. If a little bit of "I'm pretty sure it moved a tiny bit" motion is okay, the axles are okay.



The spark plug wire cover was smashing one wire, and I'll replace that one and see if it makes a difference but though I hope so, I am not holding my breath about it.



The gear ratios are close enough, and my intake loud enough, it's hard to be 100% sure it's road speed related, not engine speed. This would be easier to analyze if I weren't also driving at the same time. A good video would really help :(

A few points to add



I had my son ride along and it seems to him like the noise is definitely road-speed and not engine-speed related. Videos from another phone are only slightly less-potato-quality audio; this is really a faint noise and my car is ... not quiet.

The noise is definitely heard decelerating down hills, sometimes as loud as when on throttle up hills

Noise changes slightly but doesn't go away when brakes are applied and throttle is added to maintain speed

The smooshed spark plug wire change didn't fix anything.

For grins because I had the wheels off checking axles, I swapped front tires from side to side with no change in the noise

The noise isn't getting worse fast. If you see photos of my car on a wrecker with a thrown rod or exploded gearbox, maybe it will announce itself. Until it does, I'll keep driving the car - but less like a stolen car than usual!



Thinking about it, a cracked boot on a CV joint could be as bad as a torn boot - a cracked boot on a hot joint driven through a puddle is going to draw in water and make for a bad time in the joint after a while. I need to get back under there and *really* examine the joints, and see if there is any other sign of badness I didn't note on my quick check the other day. I really want this to be an axle problem because they are sooo much less hassle than a transaxle replacement job - but this transaxle has 240,000-ish miles on it, which is pretty good service no matter how you look at it!

The transmission gear oil which was clear and pink this weekend, is now not clear and much closer to gray. :thumbdown:



So . . . who wants to come play cars on my driveway? Bring a spare transaxle with you, willya?



I had some difficulty with an axleshaft going in/out of the gearbox tonight. I'm pretty sure I killed the oil seal because I found a little seal tension spring inside the gearbox when I went to plug the axle back in. Or else that was the spring that holds the grinding noise in. Either way, this gearbox is on its way out. Now on to my second-least favorite task: finding and replacing a transaxle.

Get an 03-08 Tiburon transmission with the 4.05 fd. It made my J2 a bit more fun to drive, especially after 300 lbs of weight reduction + ihe + 240 duration cams.

I already "only" get like 27-28MPG, so a shorter gear wouldn't really be something I'd go hunting for. If top hear is long enough, I wouldn't mind a shorter final drive, but i don't really want to LOSE MPG.



That's a question I was going to ask anyway - what else will I need? Up to a 2001 Tiburon obviously is all the same parts as I already have, but at what model year do I need to start getting the shifter and cables from the donor? Do any of the transaxle mounts change enough I need them from the parts car?

Sorry I missed this. I'm pretty sure I know what it is based on your first post. It's one of the support bearings on the differential (most likely the ring gear end) or the output shaft.

2001+ Elantra and 03+ Tiburon transmission. It will work with all of your stock mounts, shifter and stuff swapped over. Read my diy.

I drove mine for a few weeks like this. But it doesn't feel great. The linkage on top of the transmission is at a slightly different angle, puts the cable onto a slight bind. So if you decide you want a XD/GK trans, I recommend getting the cables, shifter, and the linkage that bolts to the top of the transmission.

J2/RD have single cone synchros. 2001-2003 has dual cone. 2004+ have triple cone synchros.

That's what I'd been trying not to think since it started making noise. One way to find out.





This is exactly the information I wanted, thanks. I've been looking through the old transmission-related threads and it looks like the gears I actually want are from my car's same model year- but almost any year transmission BUT the one I'm using will get me better fuel economy in top gear (using a 1998). I don't race this thing, I just drive it hard on my daily commute. If anything, taller gears will make the ride more pleasant for my passengers who tend to look at me like :nuts2:

This was clear pink transmission gear oil 2 weeks ago :(



http://i349.photobucket.com/albums/q...malasangre.jpg



I got tired of wrestling engines when removing transaxles, so I've bodged up a holding fixture with a little uppy-downy capacity:



http://i349.photobucket.com/albums/q...eadysteady.jpg



It looks pretty nasty, but it's solid. There's a screw into the radiator support to hold the front from moving around and the back is pretty well wedged in place. With weight on it, it should be fine. I had a scare when I was building this and the rail flipped and smacked the windshield but thanks God the glass didn't break.

You know, you can get an actual engine sling at Harbor Freight for under $100.

Money's so tight I have pre-used washers in this. If anybody finds McFly, tell him to go back about 15 years and slap my wife for me, tell her not to rack up so much credit card debt.

Update: The damned hurricane gave me hypothermia. Couldn't get a transaxle pulled from the junkyard because I couldn't think clearly. The rain was bad enough, but it actually got COLDER the longer I was there.



They have a 2000 Tiburon with 75k original miles and I would have loved to grab that transmission, but (typically) the front sheet metal was wrapped around it.

http://i349.photobucket.com/albums/q...sPics/plug.jpg



http://i349.photobucket.com/albums/q...ersPics/fd.jpg

Hope you get it taken care of without any further hypothermia.

Thanks, me too. I've scheduled off Wednesday from work. We'll see, I guess.

I got the transaxle, shifter, and cables from a 2002 Elantra GT. The shifter looks and feels *very* much better than the RD's shifter that's for certain. BUT I want to see how it goes with swapping JUST the small, removable bracket where the shift cables clamp in by the shifter arms on top of the transmission. There are some (relatively) major dimensional differences in these brackets. Measuring from the pins where the shift cables ends go, to the bolts and other spots they have in common on the transmission, it looks *very very* close - like 1-2mm close - to saying for sure without installing the transmission, that the RD shifter and cables can be reused without problem. Using the later model-year bracket to hold the shift cables would put it a couple of centimeters out of alignment with the way the RD bracket goes, and some of the gear shifts are only 1-2cm apart so that's huge.



I got new axle oil seals from the local dealer and installed them. I swapped over the speedometer gear. I transferred the brackets, including filing a little off the lower rear roll stop mounting area like 2000J25SP said I'd need to do. I need to double-check everything, get the throwout bearing free, and then I'll be ready to slap this thing in my car. I am hoping and praying it works. I think it will.



The input shaft on my failing transmission, can be wobbled maybe a few thousandths of an inch of radial play. Plus a good few millimeters of axial play. The "new" unit has no appreciable input shaft play. The old one, going back and forth with the rotation of the input shaft goes clunk clunk and it feels loose inside. The new one, goes click click and feels tight. The shift levers on top feel like there's a LOT of slack in the old gearbox. The new one feels tight. Plus when the oil ran out of the new gearbox on my garage floor, it was yellow and clear, with no metal flakes, vs. gray and full of sparkles.



At the junkyard, I had to destroy one of the axles in the donor car to get the engine free because the axle wouldn't pop out of the differential. I separated the drivers inside CV joint by pulling and just cut the boot. I stomped on the brake rotor until the CV axle came apart (the axle was still bolted to the spindle), then it was loose. When I went and got the hoist, it was sitting by another car where they'd done the same thing. Apparently I'm the odd man at the yard, because I actually tried to NOT cut the engine harness and sensor cables where I could. I pulled the engine and tranny together, out the top using a hoist, and separated them on my rolling cart. The shifter was also straightforward. But the shifter cables are impossible. To get at the driver's side nut holding the shift cables to the car, I took apart the entire dash, and then demolished the seems-impossible-to-remove main air handling box with a hammer. First world problems I know, but getting those shift cables took as long as getting the transmission!



Hopefully this all made sense because I'm WAY tired and the proofreading part of my brain is on strike :headshake:

I just had almost the same issue on my 2001 Tiburon @ 240,000 miles. I rebuilt the transmission / replaced the bearings myself for under $200 because I was quoted by 2 different transmission shops that they would charge $900 to rebuild it after I remove it from the car and drop it off to them.



I had another transmission lined up for my car so I decided to try the rebuild myself since I was able to find bearing kits for under $150. Half way through the rebuild my backup plan was ruined when the doner car burned down in the recent Valley Fire in California so I took my time and researched everything until I was confident I did it right.



My trans is the M5BF1 and I had it apart in my garage for about 1 month and just drove the car for the first time Tuesday morning. I have less than 200 miles on the rebuild and new clutch and flywheel and I am amazed at the difference. I wish I would have replaced the differential instead of just the bearings.



I had metal sparkles on my trans during the final fluid drain before the rebuild and I think it was part bearing and part case from the bearing races spinning. When I opened the case, 3 bearing races fell out on their own. My new races are held in with a special loctite to prevent that from happening again.



Now that I am comfortable with tearing these transmissions apart, I plan on getting another used one to rebuild as a spare so let me know if you are tossing your old one or have any questions on them.

I'm planning to keep it as a hopefully-rebuildable core, and your post makes me braver to try it for myself. But hopefully this used one will work and I'll be good to go for a good long time.

I destroyed the throwout bearing trying to remove it. Another $175 because I need this car this weekend, had to buy a whole clutch kit...nobody carries JUST the bearing. Oh, and the springs in the clutch I had in there were rusting. Great. So. New clutch, pressure plate and bearing. If not for that, i may have finished tonight. I got the engine and transaxle married. The mounts are being a b*tch and it's tomorrow, so bed time.

I put in a new clutch and flywheel when I did the rebuild. When I was putting the lower cross member in I discovered that my radiator support near the holes where the lower cross member mounts to had a 1/4" crack almost all the way around it. That alone cost me an extra day putting the car back together cause I ended up welding as much of the crack as I could then welded a 1"x8" piece of 1/4" flat bar across the front by the cross member holes.



Maybe should do a DIY article on rebuilding the transmission.

I wonder if you had filled mounts or were ever in a crash or something? Radiator support seems pretty strong right there.

The car has been in a few accidents and was considered totaled after the last accident but the lower radiator support was never damaged. I also run polyurethane lower motor mounts and both upper mounts are filled with window weld and I did replace the lower cross member a few years back after I noticed some damage to it after running something over on the freeway.



All that plus it being the main location where I jack the car up from are probably all to blame.



Glad I caught it before it broke and now it's ready to live on for another 1/4 million more miles. :racing2: