I know prop shaft whine has been discussed to death here. I've heard it in the past on cold winter mornings. I was just caught a little off-guard a few days ago when I pulled into a gas station during a long trip and heard it or something very similar when I was parking the car. I drove the car over 2000 miles to get to our cabin in another part of the country and I expect to be here for probably a couple of weeks. When I was driving around town today locally I didn't hear anything, but it still has me a little nervous about the trip home and frankly, since I went on disability retirement last winter, For some parts of the trip I pass through a couple of states where the traffic on the interstate flows at 80-85 mph. I'm not in a position to take it to the dealer and potentially set myself up for a large repair bill. Even just to have them look at the car for an hour or two might be a problem at this point. Does anyone have any thoughts on this, or things that I might be able to check for myself? If it is the prop shaft I'm hearing, I haven't come across any examples of one causing an actual failure, just making more noise.

BTW, when I was reading on the forum again on the subject of the prop shaft I came across a comment about possibly lubing the center bearing that seems to be the main problem. Is that a possibility?

 

From a financial perspective you should never own a vehicle that can put you in a position where you cannot afford to live.

That said, I do not think there is a single case of the drive shaft failing after the onset of this noise.

 

My financial situation has less to do with what type of car I own than it does with simply winding up on disability retirement earlier in my life than was planned. The checks are modest, but at least I know they'll always be there. I had a great career as an IT contractor, however those days are now behind me.

My biggest concern at this point, as I said, is my return trip. That will probably be a couple of week from now, but there's no set schedule and that could change. The mention I saw of possibly lubing the center bearing got my attention. I don't have jack stands at this location to crawl under the car, but I know someone who could loan me a set with a few days warning if that's something that's possible and might help. I'm just trying to figure out what type of lube might be best, from bearing grease to a spray can of lithium grease, or something else. We're way past the old days of just squirting it into a grease zerk.

 

Understood, you mentioned it so I didnt want to make light of the fact that as these cars age they will cost money.
Sorry to hear about the income change, the same things happened in my family and it was an easy adjustment into a "cash" business on the side to keep the disability income flowing.

None the less, with the given data from many years on this forum, and assuming the maintenance has been kept up, if I were you I would have zero concern about that driveshaft being an issue on the drive back.

 

Thanks, Heavy. What other maintenance could affect this situation? I can't think of anything that would affect the prop shaft.

We started a part-time business too, just doing vending at festivals, but we both were facing health situations this year enough that we decided it would be a good idea to take the year off. Hopefully we'll be able to get geared up for next year. It doesn't bring in a ton of cash, but every little bit helps and it's a blast to do the work.

 

Ill preface this by saying that I have not attempted to solve this issue, so my thoughts on this are solely based off of my experience living with this for the past 290k and the results of others.

That said, I do not think preventive maintenance will help, I believe this is a manufacture issue and the result of cold metal and cold grease causing tight tolerances.

Even when the dealer addressed this under warranty they just throw parts at it which usually result in the same issue down the road.

I'd have to go back and see if the repair threads resulted in a fix, but the this leads me to the question: from a cost/effort perspective is it really worth the investment to chase this down?

Fully under warranty and driving a dealer loaner car yes, otherwise I still say its not worth it until someone documents a failure or safety issue.