If you've seen my last few posts you'll see I bought a 98 Jeep Cherokee to see how it compared to the frontera, so today I took it to Hill n Ditch my local off road pay n play.
Paid my money but half way down the first hill there was some horrible noises coming from the bottom of the car, I'd put some bigger tyres on an thought it may be that but having stopped I could see I had at least a good inch of clearance under max compression. It's a loud metallic joint stess type, clicking knocking noise, the kind you get if you do wheel nuts up too tight.... but knocking too, this was happening every movement of the wheel, forwards or backwards when going over rough ground humps, sorry I didn't do a recording. My guess now is that as the axles flexed the rear prop (axle end) CV was put at more of an angle and this was causing the noise, possible do you think? I can tell you on the flat there is no noice round corners or anything else, also makes no difference whether 4 wheel drive or 2, which as the noise is coming from the back makes sense. Certainly it's something that is only present when the axle is at an angle. Suggestions welcome... other than torch it.
So given the jeep sounded serious I went back for the frontera, here's one of the vids.
they are not a ladder chassis like ours.
uggery.. they had the bearing / yoke replaced by Jeep - and it cost a bomb (warranty work - as they 'forgot' to mention towing tractors around).. sounds like the same sort of scenario.. if it drives OK under normal conditions and gets all squeaky / grindy / bang / crash / rattly when doing non flat surface driving - it could be the bearing as the prop wont be dead centre on the bearing / rear diff.. 
What were you thinking!! 
