dltrial

Yes, the two in front are the same and the two in back are the same. I could try this and see what happens; how do you know if you have a limited slip differential?

I know that the accepted wisdom is that all four tires must be the same, and perhaps that's ideal, but I have run different tires front and back with no problem before, as I mentioned and since I use four whell drive sparingly, I'm not likely to go out and buy another set of tires. I usually buy used tires in pairs from the junkyard - if i could find a full set of good used tires .. but I never have. I'm tending towards the bushings and alignment theory, but i don't know whether I will be able to work on it before the weather gets better. If I do, I'll let you know how it comes out. Thanks for the thoughts.

Slick surfaces - Ice, or packed snow. Slick enough to spin the tires moving forward from a stop. I think the tires are two different sizes front and back - I don't recall which is smaller. But I've rarely had tires that are the same front and back and have not seen this happen before. The worst that I've seen before is that four wheel drive just doesn't show much if any of an improvement over front wheel drive. Should I try switching front and back to see what happens?

On slick surfaces, if I put my 91 Loyale, manual transmission into four wheel drive, it begins to skid if I go above say 30 mph. It kind of feels like to me that the rear is trying to pull to the right, looses traction and swings back to the left and repeats. But I might be wrong. If I disengage four wheel drive, it drives straight, much different feeling and can drive faster, up to the limit of my caution. What could be going on here? The only time I can use four wheel drive is in deeper fresh snow before it gets packed down when I am limited to slower speeds anyway.

Hi GD, On my brakes there is no star wheel, there is a kind of lever with small teeth to create a kind of ratchet effect. I can see how to back the shoes off completely by reaching through the slot in the backing plate with a screwdriver and pushing on it to disengage it. But I don't how how to adjust them out or how one might back them off slightly. Derek

Can anyone give me an authoritative torque for the rear axle nut on 4wd loyales. Chiltons gives two different procedures and its not clear to me if one is for 4wd and one for fwd and which is which. One is to torque the nut to 109 ft-lbs(I think it was) and the other was to torque the nut to 36 ft-lbs, back it off until the force needed to start the wheel turning is 2 to 4 pounds. Obviously there is a big difference between the two. The Subaru which I have just bought had one side one way and the other side the other way. The side which was very tight drags compared to the other (I can't get the starting force down to 4 pounds no matter how much I back off the nut) and it makes a noise now if I don't torque it hard. I first thought that the high torque was improper and it may have damaged the bearing. After reading some posts on this forum, I am not sure. On a related note (because I was trying to check the brakes) how do you adjust the shoes in the rear? The Chiltons manual goes on about a screw adjuster which doesn't exist on my car.