I was told by a friend that my drivers side rear tire sits crooked compared to the pass side. I checked it out and low and behold the drivers side is definately off as far as camber is concerned. There are no vibrations, or any other oddities as far as ride goes. I thought maybe an axle was bent but I searched around and it seems like I would have a pretty good vibration if that was the case. Lug nuts are good, wheel is seated properly and also wheel does not shake or make odd noises when car is lifted and spun freely. Simply sits crooked.

Is there a way to adjust camber on the rear of our cars? I didnt think there was, or if there is I doubt it can be adjusted this far (could be wrong, it happens alot). Dont have a pic available at this time, sorry. I do have a diagram of basically what it looks like looking at it from the rear. Let me know what you think. I looked under the car and nothing seemed bent, as far as the link bars are concerned.

 

Hey, nice diagram man! I think it's just acting up because you're paying more attention to that damned Ford!

Rich

 

Actually, since the whole "You're about to lose your job in a month" thing has happened I havent done much if anything to the mustang. I dont want to just swap rear ends and have the same problem afterwards. I was hoping some people may have some thoughts on this. It has been mentioned to me that possibly the axle housing has been bent and not the axle itself. Does this sound like a reasonable idea??? It makes sense to me, just looking for some input form others.

 

OK, so I figured this out.

My symptoms at the time of the original post were simply that the one wheel was sitting crooked. As time progressed, I started getting a strange whine/whirring sound from the rear. It only happened on coasting and went away when power was added. A friend told me that most likely it was the diff going out.

Now that I tore everything apart, I figured out that my diff was simply low on fluid.

How did this happen?

Answer: It became low by seeping past the axle seal on the left side. The seal apparently went bad because the axle/wheel bearing on the left side had took a ****-dump which in turn caused the wheel to sit all funky.

I never had any drips that I could see. If there were drips I would have known something was wrong a lot earlier. The gear oil simply mixed with dirt behind the drum area and turned into a nasty smelling sludge stuff that was literally covering the entire area. I believe the slow leak helped to lubricate the axle bearing and therefor didnt make any noises that I could hear. Granted, my exhaust is pretty loud so it may have been making a noise that I simply couldn't hear.

My axle on that side doesn't appear bent so thats good. I will however have it checked to make sure at the machine shop that will do the pressing of bearings for me. I will update this thread again soon and let you all know what happens.

 

Good catch, I'm suprised it lasted this long though.

 

Thanks for the followup. Hard to beleive a blown bearing could carry on that long without symptoms...

 

Gotta throw out a question - the "backer plate" that has the 4 bolts that hook to axle housing and the ebrake cable mounts to - what is that called? I may need a new one as my ebrake ended up needing to be cut to get the axle out. OF COURSE it had to be the right one (left was all lubed up lol). Ugh, another 100 bucks to add to the list of $'s Ive had to spend on this car...

 

Its pretty crazy. Ill have to get a vid of how thrashed this thing is. I mean, its still in one piece but it moves around a good 1/4 to 3/8 of an inch.

 

the backing plates are no longer available through mazda but the rear cables are. i just replaced all of my parking brake cables.(i have the oem part numbers if you need them) the only way i can thin of that rear camber can be affected is through a collapsed brear wheel bearing or a bent axle..on which case a wobble will ensue. i personally have never seen a rear camber problem in an SA or FB.

 

what about the spring seat? on mine its just barely off... worried that it might cause some catastrophic failure some day...

 

wouldnt make a difference..it would only lower the car. camber is the angle between the vertical axis of the wheel and the vertical axis of the vehicle as viewed from the front or rear of that said vehicle. basically, the spring seat would have no effects on rear camber because it wouldnt change how the tire contacts the pavement camber wise.

 

yeah i should have put more information, i was wondering why it would be bent like that. i've done an allignment on my car once... gonna do it again once i get the brakes done. and will do it again once i have real tires on the front.

 

Your brakes wont affect the alignment. I would personally wait til you put tires on.

 

im taking a suspension class right now. i just don't want it to have uneven camber. shouldn't take me more than a hour to get the alignment done.

I said brakes coz the car doesn't have any front brakes right now

 

definatly want to get the brakes done..could make for a bad day, lol

 

As promised, a vid and some pics of the aftermath now that the bearings have been pressed off. On the bad side, the new bearings weren't pressed back on since the axle has damage. The other axle - that didn't have a problem got the new bearings, collar and axle seal installed and bolted back in. On with the pics and vid.

Vid:



Pics:

 

looks like you found your problem

 

lol yup. Fortunately, I already have a lead on a set of small axles so I will have a spare for "just in case".

 

awesome!

 

can't hurt to have the extra set. i have a few complete rear ends laying aroung for just an occasion, lol.

 

I can't believe you didn't hear it, but then I couldn't hear the bad front wheel bearing in the widebody til I swapped the front struts to KGray's car. He heard it right away with his quieter exhaust.

 

This may be a stupid question but I feel I have to ask anyways.

In the 83 Service Manual, it has directions for removing axles and diff, etc. Then, of course it says that installation is reverse of normal. However, it doesnt mention anything about greasing the axles. Do I need to put any grease or just slap 'em in dry? When I pulled them out the axle shaft itself had a thin layer of some type of lubricant, not sure if it was just some type of "assembly lube" or something.

 

The bearings are sealed, no need to lube those. Diff fluid does the rest. Do put antisieze on the brake cables.