So, my buddy and I are selling an 87 GL wagon, D/R 4wd. Nice car. Just resealed the whole motor, tested compression all good, good axles around, no dents, ...nice car for the.

 

A guy comes to look at it. He's driving a brand new Nissan Quest, with his family. He wants them all to go on the test drive, so we just let him go, he's leaving a $25,000+ van in our driveway.

 

He's gone for a reaaaalllly long time. OK, he' being thourough, taking it up to speed and such, ok, ok........ He gets back. We talk and he likes the car. But he said " the rear end seems to be dragging, like the brake are on when I use the 4wd":eek: :eek: Apparantley, he thought it was AWD, and drove around like that:eek: :eek:

 

Next day: We drive the car, instantly a we accelerate it shakes like the San Andreas Fault:eek: :eek: ...... axle

 

So we pull off the Axle with the most clunking, and take it apart. Of course it's a reman. Sure enough, the cage was egg shaped:eek: Not drastically, but enough for sure. One of the balls was completely pinched, and immobile in it's hole of the cage. I mixed and matched some boots and fresh grease onto an old original axle from a 2wd turbo automatic. It has over 120,000 miles, but is better than the crappy aftermarket one. Espescially after it was wrecked by the would be buyer(who never called back:mad: )

 

so in summary of my rant

 

1: DON'T USE 4WD ON PAVEMENT!!!!!!!!!!

 

2: *CHEAP REMAN AXLES SUCK!!!!!!!!!

 

3: Don't assume everyone else knows 1+2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*nescesary evil

I hope he buys the car now since he caused all that trouble.

i never had any issues with drving my rx win 4wd on pavement, just have to go to fwd at low speeds, like taking a turn from a stop, ect... as long as i was over 20 mph, the car was fine in 4wd.

maybe that slop in the axle helped some of the wear and tear on the trans?

what a bone head, you'd think he would realize that's a problem.

Dan,

hows she drivin now? How much are you selling it for? Too bad ya moved so far away (ahh, for me that is!)

lol 4WD on dry pavement with a bad axle can be fun.. Remove axle, beat outer joint until it comes off the shaft (It WILL come off, just takes a BFH), Put stub back in the hub and tighten nut. Put car in 4WD, set ebrake,

The fact that it was a guy driving a mini-van should have been a red flag:grin: . Normally you're responsible for damage that you do to a vehicle during a test drive - you didn't happen to get bozo the clowns plate number, did you?

the worst part is that most people assume that because new subaru's are awd, all subaru's are awd.

 

i had one guy ask me if my center diff was blown because i was spinning my front tires. *sigh*

Back in the day when I bought my first Subaru (an '86 wagon) and my wife and I were driving it home from West Seattle.

 

Going up a long uphill bridge I realized I hadn't tried it out in 4WD so I engaged it. The car instantly became a stone since the PO had replaced only the front tires with new. I thought, "Omigod, I bought a lemon!"

 

Disengaged 4WD and everthing was normal again.

 

I learned something new that night.....there's always a first time. Luckily no damage and the car lasted me another 140K miles before I sold it. As far as I know it's still running.