New half shaft popping noise?

I've seen a high return rate on cardone axles for other applications, but have never changed an axle on a Prius.

I agree with your diagnosis.

 

If its an inner make sure the trans is not leaking fluid from it beating up that inner diff seal. hate to lose the trans over pos cardone shaft. Watch the ground in the am for leaks. Bang and metal clank is not good thats like differential stuff heavy metal stuff.

Get under there and with gloves grab the outer and shake real hard same with inner see who's loose. Inspect inner shaft diff seals.

I would never replace any toyota suspension part using anything but oem because of this very scenario. Is the stuff I bought crap or i just didn't put it in right? Now you have both to chose from. Seen this so many times on this forum.

All that after market suspension gear now is all china crap. Horrible. Moog and cardone is the worst. The problem is the toyota stuff is crazy expensive. For a reason.

How were you able to get the inner shafts out of the trans?

 

OP post reads that he has the talent for this mechanical repair.
So installation error or damage is ruled out.
Popping noise is a great lead.

Yes get under the car and shake everything as Ed above suggested.
As if you did not think of this all ready, lift the car securely start the engine and accelerate, try to replicate the noise.

I also agree that aftermarket axles/half shafts can be a gamble.
When I compare aftermarket to OEM I always see differences.
That gamble is transmission wear/ failure versus axle cost.

Outside the box thinking, acceleration raises the front end, so maybe the popping is strut related?
All FWIW...good luck, let us know once solved.

 

Ok very good you sound like you know what your doing. Its alot of work. Good the trans seals are not leaking. I have had so much bad experience with crappy suspension parts have a bad taste about it. But the Toyota oem is really expensive. So...quite the dilemma.

But you sound like you know whats up. Good luck.

 

I have heard that strut spring not seated correctly in its holder sound. Its pretty distinct. Loud loaded bang kinda thing. Bringing back bad memorys. I will never ever install a strut spring on a strut at home again lol. man is that dangerous.

But It depends on how this job was done. I would not have scorched earth it I would have done a system then driven it a while. Struts then drive. Then cv joints and drive. See how each system install went. But thats just me Im no pro at this. Stab links are a pain in the nice person too noise wise.

 

Its a huge problem to jack the car up every time to do the suspension. Im not getting younger I really cant do it anymore. But just jacking it up and taking it down after laying on the ground all day wow that hurts real bad about 3 hours later.

OEM joints are wicked expensive. seen so many issues on here with after's all noise and knocking and on and on.

 

did you find a solution to the problem?

 

I have had this exact same problem. It happened 2 separate times on my 09 Gen 2 Prius when I replaced the drivers side and passenger side CV Axels. I even ordered another CV Axel the first time I experienced this clicking with the driver's side because I thought it was bad, but the new one I ordered did the exact same thing. I also ordered a different brand of axel half shaft when replacing the passenger side and it still did it. It would seem that they all do it for whatever reason.

What I found eventually fixed this ticking/ clunk noise was long 45 minute freeway trips at 70+ mph or so. After a couple days in a row of doing this the ticking stopped. Very infrequently now, I'll still experience a very watered down muffled clunk/tick. It's almost inaudible but you can still feel something catch a little upon braking. It only happens like .01% of the time now. Who knows what causes it.

Also, I'm a mailman and became very aware of this noise. My route is a 106 miles with over 400 starts and stops. I would experience the tick almost every time I stopped and started from a mailbox. This went on for about a month with the ticking and actually seemed to get worse at first. I started experiencing a double clunk/tick when decelerating. I had the mechanics who replaced the first one look at it twice and they couldn't find anything wrong so they said keep driving and see what happens. It just kept happening and became used to it after a few weeks. During this time I only used my prius for my local mail route and local commuting. What changed was I started helping out at a Post Office about an hour away that included a 45 min highway trip at 70+ mph. After two days in a row of this the clicking noise was greatly reduced. After 3 days it was essentially gone and stayed that way. 10,000 miles later I replaced the passenger side CV Axel myself and the exact same ticking noise came back. A couple of long highway trips fixed it again at 70+ mph worked. It seems anything slower than that doesn't work. I went on several 30 minute 60 mph trips before the 70+ mph trips and it didn't do a thing for the ticking noise. But once I got the longer 70+ mph trips in, the noise disappeared for good and neither axel makes a tick except for .01% of the time.

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I also could rock it back and get it to clunk/tick by switching between drive and reverse. It's how I showed the mechanic the problem the first time. They were just as perplexed as I was. The noise is really loud so I know what you mean about the metal hammer smacking the axel end. You can feel it reverberate through the frame of the car.

I have no idea why highway trips fixed it either, but I have a theory. It might have something to do with the centripetal force acting on the axel and transmission at high speeds that somehow helps align whatever is clunking.

I would try and get it on a few long high-speed trips for a few days and see if that works in fixing the clunking. If you ever get around to doing that let me know if it works. This is the first time I've seen someone on this forum who's had this same problem.

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Any update on this? My 2009 Toyota Prius with 180k miles just started doing this. I use the vehicle for Lyft/Uber on weekends so it sees a quite a bit of stop lights. Over the past few months I've done struts, control arms, ball joints, stabilizer links, brake pads, spark plugs, coolant, ATF fluid, and outer tie rod ends. I've noticed that it occurs on starts and stops between 0-10mph. Lately, after quite a bit of usage I've been hearing the noise when I press on the brake at 35-45 mph. Toyota says my vehicle doesn't have any open recalls but I'm curious if this noise has anything to do with steering intermediate shaft.