I have a lot of noise in the rear end of my car, sometimes it sounds like the differential other times it sounds like a bearing. My question; do these cars 1986 Cougars have a lot of noise ya know it's an old car, will some of this noise quiet down after replacing the bearings or will I always have some road noise?
Mine have been pretty quiet overall.
Dont rule out drum brakes as the source. If one of the springs go, it can make a ton of noise randomly, plus you will lose brakes.
How many miles are on the car and does it make the noise all the time or when turning or in reverse only or when the brakes are applied or ???
91,000 miles on the car, makes noise after 30 miles per hour, all the time not much difference when turning, although the hum isn't as loud if you drive over 65 mph. I am going to have the bearing replaced since that will service my differential too, then see what it sounds like, let me know your thoughts, please.
Might be rear wheel bearings. Which means you might need rear axles. You can get "axle savers", which are bushings that go over the worn part of the axle, but their success as a repair is dubious
So why do you think I'd have a worn axle? And how do you tell, by looking?
Id be surprised if the axle is bad. Ive had many cars with ove 200k miles with no rear end noise.
A light moan starting around 30 mph which goes away in coast condition sounds like gear whine to me. And truly, Id be surprised if most of these cars dont have some whine if one listens carefully.
Because the rear wheel bearings run directly on the axle shaft. There is no inner race, the rollers run directly on it. My 88 Cougar and 87 parts TC, which I used the rear end from in my 88 Sport, both had this issue. With the Cougar parts were still available so it wasnt the end of the world. With the TC rear end I used one of the axles from my 7.5" rear that I removed. You can tell if the axle is worn when you pull it out, you'll see the galling on it where the bearings chewed it up.
Yeah if it's a rumbling noise(not whine) it's possibly a bad axle/bearing... I had to replace the left side bearing and axle on my 1st Turbo Coupe at around 90K mi...
I had the same issue on my 85 TC. Felt like and sounded like it was coming from all over the car but ended up being a the beginning of the end for the driver side rear axle.
So is it a whine or rumble? Are you getting any associated vibration with it?
For me I would check the brakes as mentioned, then check the driver shaft for bad u-joints, then I would check for excessive end play or runout of the pinion, and the easy check would be the control arm bushings. The next thing would be the axles and axle bearings, then it would move into the third member with gears and associated bearings. A long shot would be a bad or out of balance tire but that is a huge long shot.
Thanks guys for all the help, took the Cat in for bearings yesterday and sadly the axles were worn scarred, had to use the big thick bearings because no one in my town had axles. I'll run it till these bearings wear out then replace everything back new. pinion gear good, brakes fine, differential gears good, haven't checked control arm bushings yet, but the car is super quiet driving on the road! Money well spent even if the tire store did rip me off.