Bent axle?

[Spiderinmlnj]

Help

My wife was driving behind me today as we pulled into the driveway.
She told me that it looked like my passenger side rear wheel was loose.

I put the car up on jack stands with stands under axle so suspension is loaded.
Wheel seemed to be on tight with a very little if any play.
When i turned the wheel you could see that the wheel appeared to be moving in and out as it rotated (i.e. camber angle was not constatnt but changed as wheel turned). Driver's side wheel does not exhibit this behaviour.

Does this sound like a bent axle?
What else could be cause of is?

If bent axle how hard are they to change out?

As always thanks for any advice.

Geoff Coleman

[Wheel]

Could it be the rim?
You could take the driver side tire/rim and put it on the passenger side to troubleshoot.

[azruss]

axles are very hard to bent, but can break. Very easy to bend a wheel. just need to hit a curb sideways.

[divace73]

put the spare on and see if it does the same thing...

[Exit98]

Geoff,

Take a look at the large and small trailing arm bushings and the panhard rod bushings and check for looseness or play. The panhard rod attachs to the rear end assembly on the passenger side, if its loose or worn you might be getting some back and forth movement.

[Spiderinmlnj]

Tried spare tire and same result.
There is about 1/4 inch of difference as i rotate tire around.
With the tire off if i rotate wheel I can clearly see the caliper move back and forth in a regular fashion.

So now the main questions are what is best approach to fix.
How bad is it to drive with it like this?


Thanks
Geoff

[azruss]

1/4" is a lot. I would pull the axle and see what you have. the issue is the other end of the axle is sitting in a spline. the outside is in a bearing and a seal. that wobble will give you short bearing life and a perpetual axle leak.

[vandor]

I've seen this before, and when I checked my spare axles it turned out that most of them were bent to one degree or another.
Easiest thing to do is to replace the axle shaft. If you can see the caliper move then it is pretty bad.
It is not too difficult to pull out the axle shaft, but pre- and post-78 are different, so we need to know what year is your Spider.

[Spiderinmlnj]

It is an 82

[Spiderinmlnj]

Today we put a new axle in.
After bolting it all up the rotor was rubbing against the caliper older in a simalr fashion to before.
After a bit of head scratching, swearing and discussing we used the lug nuts to reqlly tigten the rotor onto the wheel.
Everything then seemed to turn well.
We considered swithching back to the original axle to see if the rotor not being really snug was the real problem but decided to leave well enough alone And switch the other side to matching axle as we were also thinking the bearing on the orginal might be a bit more worn.
A 30 mile ride home exhibited no problems other than the temp gauge going a little higher than i would like but that is for another forum.


So in summary always make sure the rotors are really snugged onto the wheel.

Thanks as always for all your help.


Geoff

[vandor]

I have seen brake rotors that were not machined correctly on the inside corner radius, and would not sit flush on the axle flange. One of those rotors could easily sit at a slight angle, and cause the wheel to wobble.