Hello, and thank you in advance for your input. I am new to the forum and this is my first post. I have a 94 xj, 4.5 lift, with 1 inch t-case drop. (dana 30) I will try to describe this as best as I can. There is a very aggressive banging and clanking sounding from the front driveline area when 4wd is engaged under torque with the weight of the vehicle on it. It dosent happen when the vehicle is on jacks it gets more aggressive when I turn and the short side of the axel shaft has minor play when parked while the long side has none. Where the drive shaft connects to the back of the diff there is a lot of play side to side, up and down, and back and fourth. I deffanitly don't believe the problem is in the t-case because the noise isn't coming from back there. A friend of mine said it could be a wheel hub but I am not so sure.

 

Based on your description the pinion bearing is gone.

Doesn't sound like this is something you are going to tackle yourself......so.........

I suggest you swap a good D30 with the same ratio, you might pick on up for around $150.

Shop will likely get you for close to $800 for R&P and bearings and labor.

 

Thanks I'll look into some good used dana 30s anything I can do to prevent something like this happening in the future?