drive axle question?

Question

the drive axle is scratched in a circle from where it is touching a metal and cousing a squak when i turn. the scratch iabout five inches away from the plastic at the end of the axle it is five inches away from the plastic going to the center of the car the car fell hart of the road into a pile of dirt breacking the bumper and bending the chasis and the tire poped ever since the car squeaks is this comon what coild be the problem whats wrong what needs to be repaired

Answer 1

Could be bent control arm, bent subframe, bent sway bar, broken end link. You just said you had a bent chassis in your question, that is also your answer, that's why it is rubbing. You need a good body shop.

Answer 2

More information needed: if the drivetrain is original, please state year, make and model of the vehicle.

From the general description, it sounds as though you've got a front-wheel-drive car that's pretty much junk now.

By "plastic at the end of the axle," do you mean the rubbery "boot" that covers a CV joint? Also, by "plastic going to the center of the car," do you mean the rubbery "boot" that covers a CV joint?

Most cars aren't designed to survive a fall resulting in an impact force sufficient to break a bumper, bend the chassis and pop a tire. Having been through some pretty extreme crashes, I can say with confidence that you've described an extraordinary crash.

The dimensions of the "scratch" aren't clear from your description, so there's no way to evaluate how serious is the damage to the drive axle itself. If it just *looks* like a scratch, but it's just a shiny spot on the metal, it should polish out.

On the other hand, if after cleaning all the dirt/grease/grime away from the "scratch," you can "feel" the scratch whenever you glide your fingernail or thumbnail across it, it is probably junk.

All these problems *can* be fixed -- but in most cases, you'd end up spending more than the cost of several new cars in order to get the repairs "right."

A cost-saving method of performing such "repairs" is to find one or more other cars that you can use, together with the parts you take from the one you've already got, to make a new car.

Especially if you're thinking about combining the front and rear halves of unibody cars, get someone who's done that sort of work before -- and make sure they're a fanatic about details and getting things done right.

Without seeing the pieces being put together, I can't give specific advice, but installing a subframe and full roll cage would be among the things I would demand in such a conversion.

As a *minimum*, the subframe and full roll cage should comply with NHRA specifications. To prevent chassis squeaking, use continuous welds to attach the floorpans to the subframes.

If you want it done right, it's going to take a very long time -- figure a year, if you've got plenty of money to throw at the project. And when you're done, you might have a safer car -- but in most cases, it's actually going to be worth less at resale.

Repairing a car so badly damaged is not cost-effective. For everyday transportation, you're much better-off looking for a good used car. Don't use your daily driver for going offroading: build a special car just for that purpose.

It's a *lot* less expensive to have 2 cars (1 for on-road, 1 for off-road) than it is to try to build an on-road car to survive the demands of occasional offroad use -- and that's true from both the standpoint of buying/building the cars, and the standpoint of maintaining them.