Help with possible car problem

[zulu01]

2004 Jeep Liberty

Twice I have experienced a strange noise. It sounded similar to a flat tire or if something was flopping around and hitting the wheel well or something. I think I could feel it through the floor as well. I stopped and inspected the undercarriage but nothing is obviously wrong, and the issue goes away after stopping. Both times this happened, the temps were in the teens. Haven't experienced it at warmer temps. Any thoughts?

[Ah Pook]

Snow/ice build up in the wheel wells?

[Big Wall]

Check all the way around your tire for cuts to the tread. Once when I was in Boy Scouts our leaders car was doing the same thing. We stopped and it looked fine. We started driving again and it made the same tire going flat noise. We stopped again, pulled the tire off and found a large U shaped cut to the tread that would open up and cause the flopping noise while driving. The tire still held air but had a large cut to the tread.

[zteknik]

Check the driveshaft u joints.

[blacklabel]

Check the driveshaft u joints.

Yep, I almost guarantee it's the front driveshaft. I had the same problem in my 2005. You can pull it for now, pretty simple quick to do, and then find a used driveshaft for $100 to throw in it or buy a new one, no idea the cost on that. The front driveshaft has a CV joint and isn't really meant to be serviced. Pull your front drive shaft, drive it around and if the noise is gone then you should be good to go.

[zulu01]

Yep, I almost guarantee it's the front driveshaft. I had the same problem in my 2005. You can pull it for now, pretty simple quick to do, and then find a used driveshaft for $100 to throw in it or buy a new one, no idea the cost on that. The front driveshaft has a CV joint and isn't really meant to be serviced. Pull your front drive shaft, drive it around and if the noise is gone then you should be good to go.

Thanks for the feedback. How can I tell if the drive shaft CV joint is bad? The issue has only happened twice about a month apart.


Did some interwebz research and it sounds fairly common for this joint to go bad.

[zteknik]

Usually when you twist the joint you can feel it binding.Alo on visual inspection there might be grease oozing out.
In the case that its a u joint and not a cv joint there will be a lot of slop in it and have rust coming out of the caps.Or even the caps could be split.
I can't remember if the front drive shaft is a cv or a u joint setup.