Liberty man front wheel slip on tight turns at low speed

[markz]

Hi,

I am new here.
I am not sure which section to post this in. I have also asked in mrtperformance forums, but so far no replies, so here it goes.....

My car Subaru Libery 2.5 RX manual my99. It has done approx 110,000km.
Recently it has developed this problem, when making tight turns esp. in car parks, the front wheels seem to slip, there is a hesitation/force back felt via steering wheel and also ticking noise is heard from front wheels direction. The problem is not there when then car is cold and is most obvious when car is driven for a longer time. I had this car since new regularly serviced.
So far I had this looked at by 3 different mechanics, who diagnosed it as follows.
1. My local mechanic, who said it was low pressure in tyres, this approx six months ago, back then it was less noticeable. But problem was still there after inflating tyres.
2. A official Subaru service, last month, they said it might be rack (steering?) which needs rebuilding at a cost of approx AUD$600, but then they added it might not fix the problem as they have not seen it.
3. A CV-joints mechanic, last week I drove to Gold Coast from Sydney and it was most obvious after driving the car for hundreds of km's and I did suspect CV-joints, he after test driving the car and inspecting the CV-joints has found them to be all OK. He said, he had seen a Outback with very similar problem which was resolved by changing limited slip differential oil. He was not able to do this for me but said the car was OK to drive back to Sydney.

Has anyone seen anything like this before? If so what would the most likely problem.

I have researched this on the net and found various posts of causes like,
- unevenly worn tyres, but I have always replaced all 4 tyres at the same time, could incorrect tyre pressure cause this.
- lsd diff on the way out
- lsd diff oil needs replacing

I am planning to change the lsd oil to see if it helps.
Btw the car gets mostly driven by my better half who is a very conservative driver.

Thanks for reading.
Mark

[Ric]

I'm no expert, but I think it certainly could be a differential.
Also consider, it might be the front diff, but it could also be the centre diff (the one that couples the front wheels and back wheels together), because your front wheels travel further when you are turning, so this diff is also "slipping".

[deucer]

Ticking noises form front wheels area are usually associated with either the CV joint or wheel bearing. I don't know how this might also explain the hesitation/force you've described.

Check into the wheel bearings properly. When you mention a ticking noise, mechanics tend to disregard bearings, focusing more on the CV as the culprit.

Sounds to me like you might find a trip to a suspension specialist for a free inspection a valuable excercise. They're pretty much across bearings, CVs, steering etc as well as suspension. Might not help you with investigating the front diff as the culprit, but at least you'll have some certainty about the other components.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Deucer.

[Mano™]

Yeash.. sounds like something I had with the wagon.. was quite funny actully.. some machanic said it was the lifters.. fukin tosser hahaha..

My prob was the steering rack & a CV i had a look and yeah they were pretty dead..

Are you able to have a look and see? or ur not sure with that stuff?

I'd take it couple places, maybe to another subaru service center or something, to see what they say.. as steering rack isnt cheap to do.. new is like $1k maybe? for a gen subie one..

I could be wrong with ur prob.. but exactly how u explained it, is what I had with my wagon..

Hope this sorta helps.. prob doesnt lol but yeah get few more opinions first..

I dont see why the diff would be an issue? but i could be wrong..

[overl0ad]

i have the same problem... but i can't really go back to subie as i doubt they'd bother with giving me any warranty as far as the suspension bits are concerned.

i'm still trying to work out if it's any one of the following things i've done:

Tein Flex
cusco lower arm bar version 2 - f & R
sway bars F & R
endlinks F&R
perrin PSRS

feels like slippage when i'm turning into my driveway.


always thought it was somethign i did and didn't think there could be bearing/CV issues with an 18 month car.

will try to get to ART and have a look soon.

[deucer]

Reading your post again, you say part of your problem is you're getting what feels like front wheel hesitation at slow speeds under tight corners... yeah I get that also when reversing out of my driveway, chassis twisted over the curb and close to full lock. In this case I think it's just a symptom of the AWD transmission binding up due to lack of slip under slow driving conditions. It gets sufficient slip back when you start moving a bit a faster. If you t hink this is what you're experiencing, don't worry about it. It's normal. 4WD's have the same problem.

THe old part-time 4WD's would bind up their transmission on bitumen at any speed due to lack of slip. Now this is a REAL problem. The only solution to getting it out of 4WD is to reverse until the transmission unbinds! :-O


Cheers,
Deucer.

[markz]

Thanks for replies.
The wheel hesitation is accompanied by some noise similar to grinding (not sure how to describe it, may be a shudder instead) and it is not continuous as in it comes and goes and also there is a definite ticking/clicking noise as the wheels are turning into parking spot for example.
But all this only if the car has been driven for a while,
when the car is cold all looks and sounds OK.
Cheers
Mark

[markz]

Replacing all 4 tyres fixed the problem.

Although I did have the center diff oil changed prior to that too.
Btw, my local mechanic with assistance of another who used to work for Subaru have diagnosed it as noise was coming from the center diff. The issue was caused by uneven tyre wear between front and back tyres, this was stressing the center diff.
I have not been rotating the tyres promptly.

I will do from now on.

Apparently the limited slip diff can turn the individual rods at differing speed but only to a cetrain extent, this was mostly obvious at turing tight turns, like in car parks etc. I guess the oil did play some role in this as the issues was not obvious when car was cold.

Back to driving now.

[deucer]

Interesting solution. Thanks for feeding that back markz. Let us know if anything changes.

Cheers,
Deucer.

[Ric]

ahh, my crystal ball IS working this week then!

I'm no expert, but I think it certainly could be a differential.
Also consider, it might be the front diff, but it could also be the centre diff (the one that couples the front wheels and back wheels together), because your front wheels travel further when you are turning, so this diff is also "slipping".