Noisey front end trouble

[Josh Adams]

Ok, I did a search and couldn't find anything that sounded similar to my situation. So here it is:

There is a very loud grinding noise, like when you put a baseball card on your bike when you were little but like metal on metal. It does it when I break hard, when I back up hard, when the front end has somekind of heavier load than you usual, and when my suspension is maxed out at full drop(ie, when I hit a dip in the road and the truck bounces up, the noise happens). It is coming from the driver's side.

Here is what I've have done so far. It is a '01 4x4 Ranger, locked front end. Yesterday, I took out the diff, and driveshaft, basically I am a 2 wheel drive right now, but I put in some cv outers in the hubs so I don't destroy them. Its basically all the same except the cv axles are gone, the diff is gone, and the front driveshaft is gone. Doing all the eliminated a lot of possibilties I was thinking might be the root of my troubles.

I thought that it was the diff, cause I've had locker issues before. I thought it might have been bad cv's, but it still does it the way it sits now.

I don't know if I have a bad hub/wheel bearing assembly or if my torsion bars are shot, or if I have some bad calipers and brakes.(The breaks are basically new the only have 20k on them) 80K on the truck.

Any help/advice would great.

 

[exploded99]

Yassuh, had a noise from my front suspension at full drop as well. Turned out the rear torsion bar pads were bad. They wear through. Mine also had to have new torsion bars, and adjusting arms - at only three years old! (warranty).

Sometimes if you squirt a lot of wd40 on the rear torsion bar mount the noise will go away or change enough so you know that you have found the problem.

The torsion bars are pretty pricey - you might try the junkyard for those. Also, if this is the problem, always put in NEW torsion bar adjusting bolts - they are used to adjust your front ride height