stkane11

First time poster, long time lurker. Thanks to everyone who regularly posts here, this forum has been a great help on many projects.

My question is about my '95 4runner. Coming home from the mountains last week I was hearing a clunking/knocking noise from the rear when turning or accelerating. Crawled under to find out my panhard/track bar was disconnected on the driver's side, completely missing the bushing and nut holding that side on. Tried to fashion a bushing out of duct tape, but that failed miserably :-) Gingerly drove it home the remaining 100 miles without further issue.

A couple days later I'm headed to Autozone to pick up my bushing kit and there's a terrible banging/clunking, much worse than before. I pull into the parking lot and can immediately smell the burnt diff fluid, and there's oil all over the inner fender. Turns out I blew an axle seal and the wheel bearing was shot, same side as the missing track bar bushing.

My question is, did I cause the wheel bearing/axle seal failure by driving with the broken track bar? Could the increased movement of the axle have put too much stress on those parts, or is it all just a coinsidence? I know axle seal failure is really common. I checked my diff breather, no problem there. Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated. Thanks!

wyoming9

iTrader: (1)

One of those weird things .

Unless of course when this failed you some how also cracked the axle housing allowing the gear oil to escape which caused the bearing to fail.

What I want to know is why the bearing failed if the seal just started leaking.

Then maybe the failed bearing took out the seal more then likely.

Are you planning to replace both sides??

Since I have no idea what part of the Suspension your talking about .

Toyota calls them upper and lower control arms and the lateral control rod