Same thing happened to my Suzuki XL7 (2002). The Suzuki's were known to have front housing problems. The funny thing is, the auto XL7 had the cast aluminum front housing and the manual trans had a steel housing. I just replaced the housing from cracked aluminum to steel. It has been this way for the past 5+ yrs. I also had to replace the r&p as the pinion lost some teeth. Check your r&p.
The earlier models of the Tracker and Sidekick were also known to have similar problems as well. Someone came up with a clamp that went around the pinion snout of the housing and this minimized the deflection of the pinion walking on the ring gear. The pinion clamp had rubber mounts to the frame and the clamp was tight against the pinion snout housing.
What is going on, you are putting the driveline in a bind and something has to give. Most of the time, the tires will rotate and the vehicle would move. Simple uh? But the driveline has a point of deflection before that happens and this is the binding. What rotates is the front ds makes the pinion rotate. Since the pinion wants to rotate around the ring gear before the axles/tires rotate. This is an axle wrap condition very similar to that of the rear axle where the pinion rotates upward under acceleration.
The earlier models of the Tracker and Sidekick were also known to have similar problems as well. Someone came up with a clamp that went around the pinion snout of the housing and this minimized the deflection of the pinion walking on the ring gear. The pinion clamp had rubber mounts to the frame and the clamp was tight against the pinion snout housing.
What is going on, you are putting the driveline in a bind and something has to give. Most of the time, the tires will rotate and the vehicle would move. Simple uh? But the driveline has a point of deflection before that happens and this is the binding. What rotates is the front ds makes the pinion rotate. Since the pinion wants to rotate around the ring gear before the axles/tires rotate. This is an axle wrap condition very similar to that of the rear axle where the pinion rotates upward under acceleration.
