Could these things be related or am I just crazy?

[WhatTheFehl]

My Grand Prix does some weird things. First of all, it vibrates under acceleration... my thinking is a bad axle. So the plan is to replace both of them. The bad one seems to be the right front, and will often clunk and bang periodically when starting and stopping. However, something I've noticed is that sometimes under moderate acceleration from a stop... it feels like the transmission slips. Well, it feels almost like the tires are spinning but they definitely are not. The engine spins faster, but the car will not go any faster. It is almost like the transmission isn't getting the power to the wheels. It doesn't do this all the time, only once in a while. It only does this under moderate or heavy acceleration from a stop. The rest of the time the transmission shifts perfectly fine. Chris will know what I am talking about, as the car did this to him once while he was driving.

 

After not driving it for a couple weeks, it did this to me pretty severely in my own neighborhood trying to go up a hill... it didn't really want to go. Under light throttle it went up fine though, it was trying to accelerate up the hill under moderate throttle it didn't want to go.

 

Once she gets going, you can get into it and it feels healthy aside from the vibration from the axle.

 

The last thing I've noticed is the lug nut covers. Yes I know they fall off all the time. But I keep an eye on them all the time. I've had one missing for a couple months. In fact I know when I left the house that car only had 1 missing. I came back to the house and another one was missing. I drove it again the next day, put maybe 10 miles on it or so. Looked at the RF wheel and ALL of them are gone. My thinking was that maybe they got overheated and melted off? Or overstressed and broken? Seems weird that 3 would fall off within a span of 10 miles, considering they were all brand new...

 

Any suggestions guys?

[RobertISaar]

a driveline slip feeling and a clunky CV don't feel like they would be caused by the same problem.

 

got a way of scanning/logging it with something that will read trans slip(and perhaps torque converter slip) values?

[White93z34]

The vibration may be because of the bad? axle(s?) and/or that its lowered pretty low. IIRC that is what those shortened dogbones were supposed to help, unfortunately I think the headers don't allow you to run them without hitting the back of the fan motor.

 

I'll assume you have verified trans fluid level... and I'll say as much that the trans fluid and filter was probably changed when the trans was put in... however it probably wouldn't hurt to change it anyhow since the trans gasket leaks some.

 

I don't know really how it shifts and drives the rest of the time, but you could consider removing the shift kit if you don't like how it shifts. Otherwise I'd examine the lines going to the trans accumulator and make sure nothing is obviously wrong there... but chances are if there was you would know it.

 

What I'd do would be replace both axles with either re-manufactured ones or junkyard ones, consider changing the fluid but it wouldn't be top of my list and see how it does.