Axle Play at Transmission...Seeking Opinions

[tmontague]

FWIW I have roughly the same amount of play in both my axles, oem passenger side and aftermarket driver side. The said I don't have a vibration from the drivetrain.

I originally went to return the aftermarket axle due to this play since there was 1 month left in the warranty but when I received the new one it had more play and the outer joint was super stiff. I ended up just keeping the original aftemarket axle.

My Vibe's axles seem to have zero play what so ever but this can also be due to the axles being compressed or lengthened depending in the position of the suspension and other factors. Case in point, my oem axle originally showed no play but a day later when rechecking it, it had the same amount if play as my aftermarket one.

Play in the inner joint is not a good thing and there really shouldn't be any, but some play where the inner shaft enter the transaxle is from my experience normal. If there was no play built in between the splined inner shaft and the transaxle then you would virtually never get the axle in or out due to tight tolerances.

Determining if the inner joint has play or just the splined inner shaft is the tough part. A new axle might solve your vibration but its tough to say without swapping one in. I would assume that the vibration would improve under throttle only because it would cause the axle and joints to be compressed together leading to less play.