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As previously posted, I've had a problem with front end vibration under hard acceleration at speed for nearly a year now. It felt just like an out of balance tire, but pretty much went away went away when you backed off the throttle. When I jacked up the front end to inspect I felt a little play in the drivers side, less than 1 degree of movement, but it varied from some play to nil as I rotated the wheel.
After consulting my local shop, I ordered one of the 79.00 Chinese axles from FCP Groton, it showed up in 3 days. Mechanic installed it and charged me 170.00 - 1.5 hr plus shop materials and tax. He said he did feel some binding on the old axle when it was up on the lift before he removed it. He also said that the axle installed with almost no effort - looser than a factory one would have been. He didn't think this was a problem, however, and I have a lot of faith in this particular mechanic, or I would have taken the time to do the job myself.
The change in the car's performance is almost shocking. Smooth well into illegal speeds, no wheel shake but also a couple of other bonus surprises! First, these is noticeably less vibration even at lower speeds - what I thought was engine vibration turns out to probably be vibration from the axle.
Second is in gas mileage - according to the MPG indicator on the dash I'm getting 1.5 more MPG across the board. I've been driving it for 2 weeks now and that increase has remained consistent. I thought I was imagining an increase in acceleration, but the MPG indicates that I wasn't. That shaft must have been binding a lot to cause that; I'm surprised it didn't fail completely in the year/25k miles I've driven since I noticed the problem.
So far the FCP axle seems fine. It looked perfectly normal and of good quality when I received it, but hopefully I won't know for sure how good it is for another 100,000 miles.
posted by 108.7.7...
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