The driveshafts on my Fabia are rattling and clonking quite badly on neutral loads, with an extra bonus clonk on torque reversal in traffic. It's not absolutely predictable, which is curious, but I'm certain that the driveshafts are to blame: jack up either front corner and rotate the wheel, and you get about 10mm of free-ish movement. I don't know how bad that is in the cosmic scale of things — it certainly sounds pretty awful if you balance the throttle at speed. I'm pretty certain it can't be a CV, as there's no noise on lock.

The question is this. When I present the car to the garage, what should I expect them to do, and how long could they reasonably be expected to take? And, of course, how much should I reasonably expect to pay?

Thanks, all.

Incidentally, feel free to recommend someone near Colchester who will do a good job.

Are you sure it's not the ARB or drop links/consule bushes? Play in the driveshafts is normal, what you are feeling is the backlash in the differential crownwheel and pinion.

Worth checking engine LH mounting and the dogbone mount as well.

Interesting. Thanks, Moggy.

The anti-roll bar bushes are certainly a little creaky, but the noise is related to engine load and road-speed. Steady positive or negative torque, no problem; neutral load (or release the clutch), bad rumbling and clonking. Sitting stationary at idle, nothing. So it seems to be associated with something between the clutch and the wheels.

It's not the layshaft bearings, because they were refurbished recently in an earlier attempt to fix the problem. Ho hum. Hence my feeling that it might be the driveshafts.

What you say about the play in the drivetrain makes sense. 10mm doesn't seem a lot to me, though I've never checked for wear on driveshaft splines, so I didn't know what to expect.

This is turning into a headache...

:(