Hey all. I've only worked on a handful of Hyundais, and I'm helping my boss out here with his daughters 03 Accent 4cyl auto with about 80k. Here's the deal; he says there's a low pitched rumbling noise coming from the drivetrain that is directly proportional to vehicle speed. He jacked it up and crawled under to see what is what, and said that he found a thin line of grease sprayed around the inner boot of the left drive axle, but didn't see any tears in the boot. It's not a lot of grease, so he's probably got a little pinhole puncture in the boot somewhere. What he did find that is of some greater (I think) concern is about 1/8' of freeplay when pushing the inner stub end of the axle up and down or side to side as it sits in the differential. This isn't as measured on the axle itself, but the splined end that locks into the diff. The other side has zero, and from my experience this is generally indicative of worn side bearings. The only thing that puzzles me is that I have never seen this without a worn axle seal, and this car doesn't have any leak to speak of.
Anyone out there with Hyundai experience see this before? I rooted through Alldata and didn't find any relevant TSBs or useful specifications for freeplay, so I put it out there to you. Thanks for looking.

 

that play is normal. what he's probably experiencing with that car is the hub bearing making noise. those cars have a tendency of bad hub bearings. also make sure that's not a tire noise he's hearing not to discredit him or anything.

 

No kidding. I've worked on Hondas and Toyotas for about a decade, so this isn't normal to me. We'd call that a bad diff pretty quick. Thanks for the reply, though. I'm going to put it up on a lift this weekend and put my stethoscope on the diff and bearings, see what I hear.

 

trust me seen alot of bad hub bearings before a bad transmission( who knows i might be wrong there's a first time for everything)