BrianH
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A uni joint or tailshaft will not cause the car to wobble on the road. You will feel a vibration through the body.
You would have to have a hell of a bend in the axle housing to see it by looking under the car. What everyone is talking about is the outer end or flange of the axle where the wheel bolts on. It is fairly easy to bend the flange when you hit something. You would have to be flying through the air like the Dukes of Hazzard to bend the housing.
Jack up the rear of the car and turn the wheel by hand. Iook closely at the wheel, not the tyre, and see if it wobbles. If the wheel is buckled then fit the spare and try again. If that fixes the problem you have a buckled wheel. If it still wobbles then the axle flange is bent.
You can confirm this by removing the brake disc and turning the axle. This is normally done with a dial gauge on the flange but if it is bad enough you will see it easily. If you are not sure then get something like a pencil sticky taped onto a brick and turn the axle with the point of the pencil just touching it. If it touches on one side but there is a small gap on the other then the flange is bent.
A bent flange will also cause the disc to wobble. This will cause the disc to try and push the pads from side to side in the caliper and you should feel it through the brake pedal.
Make sure you know exactly what the problem is before you buy anything as guessing can be expensive. Be careful when buying wrecking yard axles because many are bent.
Hitting a speed hump at 60 ks will not hurt anything. Hitting one at 160 most likely won't do any harm either unless you have extremly low profile tyres. GM put the prototypes through a lot worse than that during the development of the cars.
Brian
You would have to have a hell of a bend in the axle housing to see it by looking under the car. What everyone is talking about is the outer end or flange of the axle where the wheel bolts on. It is fairly easy to bend the flange when you hit something. You would have to be flying through the air like the Dukes of Hazzard to bend the housing.
Jack up the rear of the car and turn the wheel by hand. Iook closely at the wheel, not the tyre, and see if it wobbles. If the wheel is buckled then fit the spare and try again. If that fixes the problem you have a buckled wheel. If it still wobbles then the axle flange is bent.
You can confirm this by removing the brake disc and turning the axle. This is normally done with a dial gauge on the flange but if it is bad enough you will see it easily. If you are not sure then get something like a pencil sticky taped onto a brick and turn the axle with the point of the pencil just touching it. If it touches on one side but there is a small gap on the other then the flange is bent.
A bent flange will also cause the disc to wobble. This will cause the disc to try and push the pads from side to side in the caliper and you should feel it through the brake pedal.
Make sure you know exactly what the problem is before you buy anything as guessing can be expensive. Be careful when buying wrecking yard axles because many are bent.
Hitting a speed hump at 60 ks will not hurt anything. Hitting one at 160 most likely won't do any harm either unless you have extremly low profile tyres. GM put the prototypes through a lot worse than that during the development of the cars.
Brian
