Hey fellas, got an issue. I've got an 07 3.5 FWD Vue with 165ish on it.
My issue is, I have a shimmy in the front end on acceleration and a rattle. TLDR summary at bottom.

I had a couple worn/torn boots on the front end parts last spring. I figured I would just replace most of the front end while I was at it. New Easy-Struts, ball joints & sway bar end links with "quality parts", Moog/Monroe. After doing so, I developed a minor, rare "popping" noise drove it until is got significantly worse. Determined inner rt CV joint had some play so I replaced it with O'REILLY house brand axle, cause I couldn't find anything better. Noise got a smidge better but there was still something wrong. Drove it for a few thousand trying to figure it out. The was a little bit of play in the new rt axle so I swapped in a new one. Didn't help much. The noise was primarily on sharp bumps but also, it would "growl" when sitting idling and would change when letting off brakes or changing gears. At this point, I noticed a bit of tire feathering so i got a front end alignment and the first time I jumped on the highway a couple days later, i noticed a shimmy for the 1st time. My noise still bothered me so I ended up swapping strut again and that seemed to fix noise the problem.....for about 200 miles but the shimmy was still there. Now, 500 miles later the growl is back when sitting at idle.

TLDR: I've replaced most my front end for minor issues but now am fighting a rattle and shimmy, mostly noticable under acceleration and throttle variable. The rattle was basically fixed with a SECOND new Monroe quick strut but now has returned. However, the noise of sharp bumps is gone...its just at idle.

Also the wobble is more noticeable when turning right and the least turning left. Could my SECOND strut be bad too? The strut swap did nothing for the wobble. The noise is by far mostly noticeable inside the car, i can hardly hear it outside. Wheel bearings seem tight and tie rods dont have play. Maybe motor mount? But the noise pretty much disappeared with strut swap. HELP...TIA. (Wish I'd have kept original struts.)

 

Did you replace the sway bar end links? Sometimes they'll give you a popping noise when you go over bumps or hit holes in the road. The growling sound has me puzzled, though. That sounds more like an internal transmission gear thing to me. I'd personally take the axle back to O'Reilly and get a refund and try one from the local NAPA store. I've worked for 2 of the large chain stores and I won't buy any parts for my car from either one. I won't say who they were, so as not to corrupt your thinking either way of their products. As parts manager for both, though, I saw a LOT of returns on parts that were defective right out of the box. I think you may have an axle problem. Maybe the splines on the end that slides into the transmission are not correct. If it's the wrong number, the maybe the gear is growling against the spline. When you returned the first one, did you look at the end for wear on it? I have used a lot of Monroe products over the years and never really had an issue with them. I've never used their quick struts, though. I've always just bought the strut and strut bearings separately and used a spring compressor and done my the hard way!