Front end noise

[Gotlift04]

My mom has a 2006 Armada. It has a slight vibration and light noise coming from the front. When the 4 wheel drive is engaged the noise is very loud and sounds like rattling. Any ideas where to start? Wheels are balanced and just had an alignment.

[E&J push'n wind]

My first thought would be a U joint. Also check the CV boots and make sure they are not torn and all of the grease is gone, that could make for a noisy ride. One way to check if your CV joints are bad is to turn the steering to lock one way or the other and throttle a little hard, this works with front drive cars anyway. If they are bad you will hear the "clunking" sound, again with front drive cars. Just a guess if this will work on a 4WD, things are a little different. Also if you do give this a shot, make sure you are not on dry pavement, if something isn't broke you can possibly brake something with it in 4WD on dry pavement with the wheels turned against the stop and throttling it.

[skieruscan]

Originally Posted by Gotlift04

My mom has a 2006 Armada. It has a slight vibration and light noise coming from the front. When the 4 wheel drive is engaged the noise is very loud and sounds like rattling. Any ideas where to start? Wheels are balanced and just had an alignment.

You may also want to check the front hub assemblies. My right just failed completely and I am replacing the left one, too. Since these have the ABS sensor embedded in them, you can get some tricky situations when the hub goes bad. Braking will be erratic and 4WD may try to engage since it's noticing a slip from the sensor. The behavior gets really strange, really fast.

The hub assemblies are not very expensive, and with a 2006, you're probably due to have them replaced. I certainly was WAY overdue as mine failed during a roadtrip back from Thanksgiving.

http://www.am-autoparts.com/Nissan/A...FQ2znQodSlYArw