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I was driving home from work the other day and went to drive off from a stop sign. I went to release the clutch, and started to hear a clunking noise, at first I thought I wasn’t in gear all the way, attempted to start again and got the same noise. I pushed the car off the road and found these lying where I was, does anyone know what it could be and a estimate on the repair cost. I’m currently 1000 miles away from home and can’t get more pictures for a few days, just looking to get some guesses on my problem.
Just make sure you go with good quality replacements or you'll be doing it again in a year or less. I got new GKN axles from 944online for about $450.00 or so.
Agree with the others. If this is the first time the CV joints have been replaced since the car was born, you will need to be very careful with the removal of the existing internal hex head bolts that hold them on. If you strip out the heads or break a bolt, your degree of difficulty just went through the roof. You will need the correct size allen wrench and you will need the type that mounts on a socket, not the L shaped ones. Lubricate everything with PBlaster or Kroil. Insert the allen wrench into each socket and strike with a hammer, both to shock the bolt and to make sure the shaft of the wrench is fully seated. I would start with a breaker bar and get each bolt unstuck. They will be stuck pretty good. I think the factory maybe put thread locker on the threads.
If you are just trying to get home, you will only need to do one side. Buy the half shaft that is made up with a CV joint at each end, ready to drop into position. Although it is certainly possible to just replace one joint, getting the joints off and on to the splined half shaft can also be difficult "in the field". You'll need a torque wrench to install the new bolts. New bolts would be a good idea. Chasing the threads of the existing female holes with a thread chaser is recommended. Otherwise, any crap left in the holes will interfere with getting a good torque reading on the install.
You will need to rotate the hub several times during the process so that the bolts that you are working on are at the lowest point. Reaching them all in one shot without rotating the wheel is pretty tough to do.
You might want to mention where the car is. Help might be close by.
You might want to mention where the car is. Help might be close by.
This. i was able to help someone with this exact problem a couple years ago. Hooked him up with some spares that I had in my attic at 2 in the morning.
Also, not an allen wrench, but a triple square if done correctly. Best bet is to use some brake clean to blast out any crud in the bolt recesses, then use Pblaster or similar to loosen any corrosion of bolts.
User Name is a seeming random combo of digits and letters.
One post.
No activity since the time this was posted.
Starts off saying "on way home from work", yet ends with "1000 miles from home".
Hmmmm...
This username isn’t a random combination of numbers and letters yet it appears to be, it has a meaning to me. I recently got my car and it broke the day I was leaving for vacation which happened to be a 1000 miles away from my house.
Here's a picture of the spider cage of my last set of CV joints. The bearing in your picture is the right size to ride in the grooves of the cage, it looks like the surrounding part of the CV joint that encloses this part and the bearings shattered and left the parts you found on the road. The spider is probably still attached to the half shaft/axle mounted to the transaxle.
It's something you can fix without many tools, but you will need a torque wrench and a triple square bit for it, may as well buy a set of them, here's the one I use:
You'll need the extra length to get around the CV joint boot.
It can be a little cheaper to just buy a single CV joint instead of a pair of half axles, but I'd call that a "quick fix" until you can get the car home and it will be more expensive in the end. Usually you replace all the joints at the same time, along with the boots. I didn't buy new axles, just four new joints and boots last time I did it. I don't remember it being that hard to get them off and on the axles, but it is kind of messy and having a bench vise helps.
<Also, not an allen wrench, but a triple square if done correctly>
My half shafts were fitted long ago with the Stage 9 bolting scheme, so I was going from memory regarding internal hex head versus triple square. The PET lists it as a "pan head screw", which is not very helpful. Anyway, I made my post on the assumption that the guy was going to maybe have to do a "field repair" a 1000 miles from his house. Regardless, if you going to be doing any work on a 944 a set of triple square bits is a good purchase.
I finally got a chance to get under my car last night, there’s a fair amount around the cv joint area. I think the noise I am hearing is unrelated to that though. Here is an audio clip of the noise.
07-19-2018, 09:02 PM
944 problem
