Hi, I have noticed a minor metallic rattle over the past few months at idle and low revs.
After reading numerous articles on this forum and others I decided it was the propshaft / donuts - I know that these were replaced by a previous owner around 5 years go.
Put the car on the ramps an narrowed the rattle to the front donut. I had an old "cheap" 17mm combination spanner that I had ben the ring end to about 30 degrees, this fitted perfectly on the nut to the propshaft belt. I had enough clearance fromthe exhaust to find that two of the three nuts were loose.
Drop the exhaust from the manifold, used the bent ring spanner to tighten. Checked all other propshaft bolts that I could get to.
Rattle gone. Can't help but think that I have dodged a bullet - I have seen the pictures of donuts that let go!
Hope this helps others!
Fazersix, I currently have the same problem. So, what you did was to listen to each doughnut from under the car while the car was idling on the ramp? Did you you use any "medium strength" Loctite to prevent it from happening again?
Hi, yes I had the front wheels on the ramp and with the car idling I could hear that it was from the from donut - difficult because the sound does travel down the tail shaft. No I don't use loctite because I want to make sure that these loose nuts were the issue first. Since the they are nyloc nuts and all of the others were tight, I thought that maybe someone did not do these two up to spec! I am going to check them regularly so if they do come loose again, then it is no big deal to drop the front exhaust again and use loctite then. BTW Bunnings has cheap 17mm spanners for about $2 that bend nicely and it fitted onthe nut snuggly. Picture of the bent spanner attached