Recently noticed clicking noise coming from my 06’ Alpha wagon as I backed out the driveway. Interesting because I drove it moments before that and no noise; seemed to appear all the sudden.

Symptoms:
In gear, rear or fwd (H on xfer), get a clicking noise that seems to correspond with shaft turn. 2 clicks, 1 on each half turn. One is slightly different than another but consistent each set. Also, when in Neutral on transmission, and rolling backwards, no click, appears only when in gear.

Seems to lead to CV where I can read from other discussions but, since the CV is still spinning when in Neutral I’m a bit puzzled as to why this could be the issue. Perhaps something to do with load?

Found another discussion about stock rims and the CTIS hubs but this again would still be an issue in N and it doesn’t appear to be the case.

Thanks for reading. Would love any ideas/debugging advice.

 

Check your half shaft bolts. Sometimes they back out and will make a clicking noise as they rub.

 

thank you, those looked alright. Inner and outer. Puzzling to me why in gear is noise and N isn’t tho. Perhaps under stress/load vs not?

 

dropped it off at Hummercore to get diagnosed/fixed. Will let y'all know what they find. Im thinking it ends up being half-shaft but would love to understand why it's not making noise when in Neutral since the CV still spins. Perhaps it's a load/torque thing.

 

Had my kid with me and no ride back from shop so figured I'd use some free towing courtesy of AAA

 

If in SoCal I recommend Tustin GMC as a service destination. Mike Sabbarese is the best H1 mechanic in the nation and he runs the Hummer service department there. No one knows H1s better than Mike. He is also very fair on pricing. Mike was one of the originally trained AMG H1 mechanics. back when Huntington Beach Hummer was open.

 

Great! I'll keep that in mind for sure. Thank you for the recommendation, that's really close by.

 

To follow up, they (HummerCore) replaced the front drive line (U-joints, Center Support, Centering kits for CV joints, yokes). Sounds like truck is done so I'll be picking her back up today :-D

 

WOW, how many miles on your truck? I did have a clicking sound on one of my Alphas. Turned out it was the center caps in the wheels.

 

I had similar symptoms on mine as well. The key here was to but both gearboxes( transfer and otherwise ) in neutral and depending on which one was first put into gear determined whether ot not the noise came back.