Whenver I accelerate from a stop and turn left, I hear a loud clicking noise from the front half of the truck. There is no noise when turning right and accelerating from a stop. There is no noise when holding brake+accelerating going straight.
Same noise when 4x4 is engaged.
Same noise when accelerating hard straight and going over a bump, seems to happen on the down side of the bump.
I've inspected the axles, the u-joints seem to be ok. (I think) I've raised the back end and turned the wheels by hand, and can't reproduce the noise. Raised the front driver side, turned tire and can't reproduce. I've asked my wife to listen closely outside to see if she can locate.......nevermind......

I've replace the inner & outer bearings on both front sides(which was a b*&^ch cause i'm a rookie. 5 hours first side 2 hours second. Damn spring clip.) Could I have not tighted down hard enough or tighted down too hard to make the bearings go bad early? I put PLENTY of grease.

It has a new belt, fan clutch, and idler...It made noise before the swap.

I'm stumped, and don't want to take it to a mechanic just yet.

Could it be the power steering pump?

Thanks,
jjb

1995 F-150 XLT 4x4 351
Automatic Tranny (says "metric" on it)
~155000 miles
xtended cab
31x10.50x15 Yokahama Geolander II+ (great wet trackion on HWY)
3 bolt auto locking hub (replaced at 80K miles under warr.)

 

my father had an 89 tauras (front wheel drive) that made the same noise but his had a cut or rip in the boot around the u joint. try greasing the joints

 

Is it manual hubs or auto? sounds like something is in wrong. Could be needing new caliper slide pins since it doesn't do it when you brake but since you mentioned doing the bearings I ask about the hubs. Did you do that before or after the problem started?
Pull the front wheels and look at the radius arm bushings and pivot bushings and grab hold of the calipers and try to move them with your hand. Oh and while in there make sure you knock down the tab on those stupid brake pads. I don't know why ford does this but you need to take a hammer and bend that one tab that hooks over the knuckle on the outside in so the outer pad doesn't rattle. You may have the newer kind , I can't remember for sure but if you got the kind with the two drive in slide pins with the rubber in the middle then that is the kind I mean. You need to bend over the tab and tighten them. Let me know if any of this helps or You can't understand what I mean.

 

It has auto hubs. It seems to be locking in / out just fine.

The clicking started at least a year after the new bearings.

The calipers and pad were replaced over two years ago. It's probably time to clean and replace the pads. I'll have to check it out tomorrow.

 

I would bet on it being your CV Joint, check to see if your CV boot is torn. If so you'll have to replace the entire CV shaft (not too hard.) Unless you know how to rebuild CV Joints. Once the joint starts to click, it's basically trash. Good Luck!

 

What cv shaft? this truck has u joints. A lot of them!
Unless it is a honda ford hybrid.

 

LOL

 

Thanks for the clarification guys...I was getting ready to start thinking that I had lost the cv joints somewhere or I was going to have to go after the original owner cause he replaced the cv joints with u joints over 6 years and 120k miles ago....LOL....

I plan to take a good look at the brakes tomorrow...Any other suggestions?

 

I have had worn slider pins on the brake caliper cause that problem before.

 

yeah i would bank on breakpads i had the problem with them moving on a car before

 

OK, I replace the rotors and pads. But didn't replace the sliders. I think I should have because it is still clicking.
Here's some pics of what happened.

http://home.earthlink.net/~javieljb/FrontHub.htm

I'll go find some of those slider clips and replace them tomorrow. I'm done for today.

Thanks again.

 

Did you hammer down those tabs on the outer pad like I said earlier. You will see what I mean if you look at it. You need to wedge a big scrwdriver in there from the bottom to hold it and hammer the upper tabs till they are tight against the caliper.
Also and this is always overlooked but inside your spindle is another needle bearing. You have to take off those 5 nuts and with a special puller designed to thread on to the spindle and slide hammer you knock the spindle off. You can use a hammer and big cold chisel but it is a big pita! The bearing I am refering to seperates the axle from the spindle. FWIW I have never known anohter mechanic who took the extra ten minutes to grease them besides me. Thats called getting what you pay for in a garage. The garages get all te money and the mechanic doesn't!
The spindle puller is only available from the snapon and matco man as far as I know. Maybe next time you see one on the side of the road you can get one. They will normaly order it for non mechanics if you pay cash up front.

 

read the thread that has a title that is something of the sort "frame popping noise???" take look it may have something to do with what your problem is, and it is quite common

 

Seems like it was time to replace the ujoints. What do you think?



I had to take it over to the shop to get the ujoints back in. Damn needle bearings! He only charged me $30 to replace the front and rear joints. I had my wife take the drive shaft over to him at lunch, he had it ready by 4:00pm.


Sounds a little better, but can still hear the clicking.

 

Mine started clicking back in November when I had auto hubs, turns out the front right hub had gone bad, so I went ahead and bought Warn Premium Manual Locking Hubs and had those installed, and now no more noise from the hubs.