Transmission questions

[Micah]

Okay- some time ago I broke an axle on my 2005 Honda Element (manual transmission- AWD), dragged it home and replaced the axle. I’ve never had an axle break before, so that in itself is a head-scratcher. Since I had it open I started looking at other reasons why the axle might break- found some brake caliper problems and fixed those. Did some other maintenance- replaced the transmission fluid, serpentine belt, oil. Took it for a test ride and then had all sorts of groaning from the rear differential area. Learned that this was an issue with the fluid there, so I found the procedure to replace the fluid and burnish the clutch- which involves jacking the car off the ground so the wheels can turn freely and putting it in gear for a few minutes in both forward and reverse and draining and refilling the differential again. While doing this I found that only the rear wheels were turning. I would have expected either the front wheels to turn, or a possibly all 4 wheels to turn. My question is: is it normal for only the rear wheels to spin under this circumstance? If it is not normal, does anyone have any idea what might be causing only the rear wheels to turn?

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[Igor]

I don’t know much about All Wheel Drive but your question is interesting.
Did you need to remove ABS or Speed sensor on front axle ? Are all readings from instrument cluster OK? Speed, RPM etc….

[Micah]

I ended up replacing the ABS sensor, mostly because I screwed it up removing the knuckle (comes out really easily if you lever it out from the inside of the knuckle, don’t try to pull it out from the top). I didn’t look at the instrument cluster, because once I saw that only the rear wheels were moving I though I might want to look into that and shut it down. I will have to bleed the brakes before I can take it for another test drive to get those questions answered on the instrument panel. Plus, every time I look at it, I find more things that need attention. 🙂

[Micah]

Speed seems to be good. I thought it was supposed to work by the difference between the front wheels and the back wheels. The shaft between the two are obviously turning. Second test drive showed the rear differential working overtime.

[Micah]

Dragged it in. Basically a RTFM situation. While I was told to use ATF fluid, it uses manual transmission fluid. Thankfully I didn’t do more than test drive around the block. A drain and refill with proper fluid solves the problem.

[Author]

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