Knocking Noise From Rear Wheel

[lawman]

hello everyone - its a long time since i posted on the forum so please be gentle.

I have a 1998 rav4 GX 5 door. Recently I heard a knocking noise coming from what sounds like the rear offside wheel ( right hand side ) when i start to accelerate or de-celerate.....for example when coasting slowly down a hill - bit of gas and i hear the knock.

Any ideas what this is....My mechanic has had a look and cant find anything - he says it may be the diff or the drive shaft....I thought it may have been something in the wheel hub??

Ideas please??

[Nigebob Squarepants]

Are you sure it’s from the wheel / hub?

Try wrestling with the exhaust a bit to see if you can replicate the noise (be brutal though) they can take some stick!

It may just need new exhaust rubber hangers

Cheapest cure first! Hopefully

[lawman]

Are you sure it’s from the wheel / hub?

Try wrestling with the exhaust a bit to see if you can replicate the noise (be brutal though) they can take some stick!

It may just need new exhaust rubber hangers

Cheapest cure first! Hopefully

yeah - defo not the exhaust...the mechanic has had the car on the ramp and it still makes the noise when the gear is engaged and the wheel turns - front and reverse....

[bothwell_buyer]

On the 4.1, after around 80,000 miles or perhaps just with age, the rear suspension mounts degrade and allow the rear end to rock.... which is the knocking sound you get. Its very difficult to check or detect until the bushes are very bad by which time the knock has become a clunk.

Things to look at are the rear diff mount - a favourite which goes soft and allows the diff to rock/tilt back and forward. This can be stiffened by filling the bush with silicon gunge.

next is to have a good check of the rear trailing arm bushes and suspension mounting bushes.

Lastly, or maybe should be first as its the easiest to check.... is make sure the rear hub centre nut is torqued to the right setting. If this has loosened off, perhaps through a little wear, than it can cause a clunk which you cant detect when the car is on a ramp. This happened to my number 2 RAV - at its MOT we could hear a clunk but couldn't find any wear or movement. However, I asked the garage to check the torque and sure enough by taking it up to its correct tightness cured the knock.

[trevnhil]

Not because of any Knocking, but because of rubber bushes degradation, I have just had the rear diff mounts replaced. Mine is a 1999 Rav 4 and has done around 100,000 miles. I also had the prop shaft centre bracket / bearing replaced because it had had a knock underneath as well as the rubber perishing.

Trev..

[Sivitri]

I have a 1988 RAV 4 and it has a clunking sound in the rear mostly when going over any bump, small or large and also the thud when changing gears... less so if I shift very very gently. All the mountings have been changed, even rebuilt to eliminate any give and the clunking sound has not improved. I took it to a different mechanic to get some fresh eyes on it and he said the transfer case needed to be replaced which is a major job and very expensive, and apparently the parts have been discontinued so I’d need to get the part from a scrapyard or from overseas. I’m in South Africa and it’ll be hugely expensive to do that. Has anyone else heard of the transfer case being the problem? It’s linked to the transmission so the whole unit has to be replaced 😫 I’m not entirely sure that this is the problem so any ideas or help would be appreciated. Thank you! 

[Nick72]

I had a tapping sound issue but turned out to be a large stone in the rear offside tyre. Found after scratching my head for 5 minutes.

[ernieb]

I’ve had the same thing with a stone in the tread but also on the Skoda Yeti there was a cover over the brake discs and you could get a stone in there which was impossible to see and made all kinds of sounds depending on where it got lodged.

I had a bump sounds from the RAV from the boot and found that the spare tyre socket arm had come loose and was thumping up and down, fixed back into the moulding nd problem went.