Not happy & feel this is a defect. Is a 98 XC with 210K on the clock. Wife heard a pop followed by noise. After a bit of work found that the connecting sleeve between the trans to the bevel gear had stripped out. Bought a new sleeve for a staggering $100. Then found the teeth coming out of the trans were severly worn as well. The only way to get the problem really fixed is to replace the trans with one that has good teeth on the output gear to the sleeve. That's not going to happen.

Am now running the car as front drive only. No driveshaft. Put the new connecting sleeve on with the bevel gear and have lost AWD capability. This sould not be an issue. Have had the car since 120K miles and in that time have run new tires that wore well until the next fresh set. I mention this as we know running different sized tires can cause a problem. What happened before my ownership I do not know.

Any XC's out there with more miles that haven't had this failure? Most of the miles have been Hwy miles, roundtrip commute is 120 per day. This is wifes car & she drives it much easier than I drive mine. Found that we need this car when the snow falls to get up & out of our long driveway, have no idea how it will do as a FWD. Other than an 850 we had that couldn't handle it. I have a terrible time with my RWD cars with limited slip diffs. The XC could make it without spinning a tire.