You may be able to feel some slight movement in the joint when moving the yokes, that'll tell you the u-joints are toast.

Sent from my Droid4 and Jkfreaks.com

 

Use a jack to lift up the axle so that you can spin the wheel/tire by hand. From there, you can identify the source of the sound if it is wheel/tire/axle related.

Also, crawl under your rig and look at the rubber driveshaft boot to see if it is torn.

Don't drive your rig at all until you identify the problem. If for example, it were a missing u-joint cap, you would damage the ears on the axle shaft.

 

That is the way to know for sure. Grab the sides of the u-joint and shake the hell out of it. If you hear any rattling at all, it's bad.

 

ok so I'm rotating my tire freely and I can feel the noise in the tire but when I put my hand over the ujoint I don't feel it as much. However if I quickly rotate the tire front to back I can feel a very very small amount of play in the joint against the axle. Also, the noise isnt as predictable as when im driving. I also got a couple pictures. Could it be anything more towards the brakes?

Also if I hold onto the draglink or tie rod I feel the clunk as well.

 

Video of the noise.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXcZqyxUHrM

 

Sounds like a u-joint to me.

 

There should be absolutely no play in the u-joint on the axle shaft.

 

That's your ujoint

 

Jeep is at the dealership being fixed under warranty. Figured I'd give it a shot to save myself a bit of work and they actually covered it. Will post back soon with an update.

 

Just started hearing some noise in mine after light wheeling in NM. mostly in 4wd. Any word on what it was?