Can I remove the front axle on all wheel drive Aerostar and drive the vehicle?
My son is out of town and sez the front wheel is making and strange noise and we suspect the cv joint is going bad. He is taking it to a friends mech and we thought this may be an option til he gets it back home.

 

I would think not. you would then have grease slinging all over the lower engine and exhaust

 

You right about that, would have to fashion a block off plate of some sort. The shop he is taking it to is only open a half day tomorrow(Sat.) and we don't know if they will fix it on such short notice. Thanks for the response.

 

Probably a CV joint needs replacement.

If you remove the front drive train, the center differential will spin until the electric clutch engages. It will burn out trying to move the van.

 

Do you mean remove the axle assembly as a whole, or just one axle shaft? IIRC, the axle CV shafts have a bolt on flange on the inboard end, so the shaft could theoretically be removed with out opening the seal on the axle housing. But I'd have to go look again and see if I'm right on that one.

But even if you did that or removed the whole axle, you would not be able to drive the van. The AWD system has an open front and center differentials. Open diffs always send the same amount of torque to both outputs (both wheels for an axle diff, and the front and rear for a center), so if one output has no ability to handle torque without spinning, both it and the other output would get zero torque. An AWD system with 3 open differentials has big plusses and minuses. When the tires have traction, it can put down twice as much torque as 2WD. But if any one of the tires looses traction, the vehicle is immobilized, so it has twice and many ways to get stuck. That's why the can had the center lock up clutch and an option rear LSD.

So by disconnecting even one wheel would result in the front diff spinning up, which would in turn result in the center spinning up and not transferring any torque to the rear end. It would be just like the one wheel was on ice, just spinning and spinning. The transfer case clutch would cycle on and off to try to prevent the spin and would probably provide some mobility, but it be cycling constantly and could likely burn out the clutch.

So, the moral of the story is, no, don't remove the front axle and attempt to drive the vehicle.

 

Thanks for all the input. As it turns out the problem was wheel bearing and he got it fixed quickly while in Memphis.