I removed the front cover to get to the torque tube clamp and what I see is not good, I think. The splines are not fully inserted into the front clamp. I haven't been in there before but it must have been that way since I bought the car. How do I go about moving the torque tube into the clamp about another inch, at least. See pic below...

 

Something's up with the rear clamp.

MrMerlin will likely chime in here soon to explain the procedure for the rear clamp...

 

Uhoh.

The rear clamp is similar to the front, BUT there is a locating groove in the splined portion of TT and input at the rear. You can't put the bolt through the rear clamp unless the grooves in the shaft and input are lined up with the bolt holes. Not sure what might be going on at the rear, but as Ken mentioned, you need to have a look back there. The rear exhaust (cat back) needs to come down to get access to the rear clamp. There is a small access hole in the TT tube there.

 

Here is a picture of my GTS with color markings, your drive shaft inside the torque tube has moved.

 

True...."You can't put the bolt through the rear clamp unless that groove in the shaft is lined up with the bolt hole....." But if you own a drill sometimes people just use it !!!! Bolt wont go in drill it until it will....

 

Your TT will be way beyond the normal position. It is probably all the way in there...

The TT you see have the normal position on the tranny side, yours is probably about on inch further out. I would doubt that there is a bolt installed, jut my personal opinion.

 

I'm going to throw out a guess that somehow they got the shaft pushed back in the rear and still got the bolt in. I didn't know this could be done, but from this drawing in the WSM it looks like there is a necked down area forward of the bolt groove that might still allow the bolt to go through. Note the spec for the end position of the shaft relative to the TT. This may not be fixable without removing the TT as the shaft usually will not move in the bearings without some substantial force, unless the bearing holders are very worn. You can try removing the rear clamp bolt and somehow pulling the shaft forward from the front until the correct groove shows up as you look at the rear clamp through the access hole. Weird. I think if the rear bolt were left out, the splines would be screwed up pretty quickly and no longer mate.

 

Here is the rear bolt removed from the clamp. Its in pretty sad shape. I'm going to try to move the torque tube forward into the flywheel clamp now. I'll let you know how far south this goes....

 

Wow. Someone didn't do something right.

 

Get a new bolt too!

If your TT bearing holders are worn, the shaft may move if you can get some leverage at the front end... You can unbolt the front clamp housing from the flex plate, shove it back on the shaft, retighten the clamp bolt and use it to lever against to pull the shaft forward. Be sure to mark the orientation of the clamp housing relative to the flexplate before you unbolt it - these are balanced with the flexplate. You could just unbolt the flexplate from the flywheel, but I don't think you can shove the whole assembly back very far because of the bellhousing.

 

Well I've tried to move the shaft forward in the tube and it doesn't want to budge. If I have to pull out the torque tube to fix this it will be time for a rebuild of the torque tube... This has not been a good day. I'm going to try a few more times and then give it up if there's no success.

 

I can't come up with a better way to move the shaft. It's just a matter of enough force.

If you have to pull the TT, certainly that would be the time to rebuild it. I had mine out recently for another reason and TRIED to rebuild it. Talk about not wanting to budge. Sometimes the bearings and carriers literally fall out or are pushed out easily with a 3" diameter PVC pipe length and a hammer. I beat the living crap out of mine and it would not move. Would have required a ram or press. I spun the shaft, felt for any play in the bearings, evidence of dry bearings (spins very freely), any runout - none. I put the TT back in the car. Yep, almost 230K miles. Kind of ridiculous, but since they detriorate with gradually increasing noise and vibration, I let it go for now.

 

Hi Daniel,

What probably happened is the drive shaft was pushed backward a bit too far during install and the bolt was forced against the necked down portion of the drive shaft forward of the groove. That would explain the drive shafts position in the TT and the flattened screw threads.

Bill's suggestion will work. Another one that will work is to unbolt the flexplate from the flywheel, move the whole assembly back on the drive shaft splines, tighten the clamp and leverage/hammer (hard plastic or deadblow hammer) against the clamp, turning it now and again, to move the drive shaft forward. It will move but it might not go willingly.

Sorry I wasn't here before, was out in the work shop rebuilding a TT. Go figure...

 

Alright then, I guess I'll be back under the car tomorrow banging away... Didn't have much luck today.

 

Someone put the wrong pinch bolt in there. The pinch bolt needs to be purchased from a Porsche parts supplier.

Here's one I removed from my 90' S4 shortly after purchasing it. In this case, the backwards migration, I believe, was caused by the PO's mechanic improperly assembling a new from Porsche torque tube, at the transmission end, without the two bolt alignment sleeves installed in the torque tube.



Compare the bolt above from my car with the one from yours below...