potrero wrote:for what its worth, I had this same problem and was told it was s simple fix - "replacing the cotter pins at the hubs on the two front wheels." they did this yesterday, free under warrantee, and the clicking sound seems to be gone. they said theyve seen this alot (not sure if just on Leafs or on other Nissans too). We'll see if it comes back.
That does not sound right...
Cotter pins are there just for safety, to make sure the main axle nut won't come lose, but AFAIK that nut should be always tightened to a certain momentum, so the only way the cotter pin can make sound is if the nut is loose, which is a bad thing by itself and might cause the wheel to wobble...
To the sound of this crackling reminds me the sound of bad connection between pedal crank and the hub on the bicycle... If there's some small movement in the connection, you'll have exactly the same crackling.
So, I kind of suspect that there's some unexpected/unhandled backlash where axle connects to either wheelhub or to differential, or maybe somewhere in differential itself. The standard nissan solution to it was to grease it from outside, which might silence it for sometime, but it won't fix it as backlash is still there, so when the grease will be forced out of this backlash, the sound will return...
I'm just amazed that with so many reports of the problem there's no action/investigation from Nissan

and dealers are mostly oblivious, either trying to fix what aint broken or denying that there's a problem...