legacycentral bbs

just purchased a '01 Legacy wagon with an auto tranny. Has a rotational whine when transmission is under a load. the tran mount was missing a bushing which I changed. pulled the rear drive shaft and found the front and rear u-joints to have hard spots. I am a heavy equip and truck guy so I never saw u joints that don't have snap rings. So I guess I have to buy the whole assembly?????

When you turn the output shaft on the tranny you can feel that the bearing is scratchy. Can you pull the rear half of the transmission and change the output shaft bearing without much hassle?

Also when I ran the car on the lift the drive shaft seemed to be jumping around quite a bit. How much play should there be in the center bearing assembly?

Thanks.

I know a good driveline shop will be able to replace the u-joints on the driveshaft. they may have to put another yoke on it to do it though. The other questions I will leave to others.

Jeff

Welcome to the BBS.

Typically Subaru does not make the u-joints servicable/replacable. You may be able to find a shop that could do it though.

You can pull the rear extension housing on the automatics with the trans still in the car. I have not personally done it, but others have. This is primarily to do work on the rear clutch packs.

The jumping around you noticed was probably due to the car being on the lift. The AWD system can get kind of funky if you try and run it without load on it, or not have the same speed on the front and rear wheels. Since the normal torque distribution is 90/10. If you run it in the air, you'll likely start to see a speed difference between the front and rear output shafts, the TCU will try and compensate, and you'll get a yo-yo effect that will likely cause the jumping around you saw.

The stiff spots in the u-joints is quite common and most likely due to the limited angle the driveshaft sees in normal operation. During normal use, those spots in the u-joints' travel would not be used.

Thanks to all for your advice.

Pulled off the back section of the tranny. Output bearing was shot. Swapped for a back section at a local sub specialist for $75. Back in and quietly down the road.

Put the rear drive shaft back in and will hunt for a rebuild. Any suggestions on reliable source for a rebuilt rear drive shaft?

There's only one driveshaft.