I finished installing my new CV Joints today and went for a test drive.

All is well.

The passenger side CV Joint was in worse shape than the driver's side. Not damaged, but well worn and rusty from exposure. The allen head bolts on the diff flange were quite difficult to remove, but I got em.

The car drives fine. No pulling, shimmies or noise, she brakes nice and straight and rides smoothly.

There was a very slight thunk in the steering at near stand-still speeds at first, but several tight circles at slow speed cured it. Must have been the new stiff joints.

The click that I had been noticing while turning around in the drive is gone and a clunk I've heard occasional on one stretch of road seems to be gone.

Man, what an education I've received in the past two years! Many thanks to all those who've helped with the learning process and support.

Cheers,
Dave

 

Dave, congratulations on a job well done. Glad to hear you are back on the road! Your CV job ended up being more than expected and I am glad you handled it so well.

 

Hi, this is way too late, but about 6 months ago I replaced the inner front boots on my C4 and there is no need to release the ball joints etc'.

Just undo the screws that hold each inner cv joint to the front diff flange and then lift the front trunk lid and undo the three nuts atop the strut on each side and push the strut down and then using a lever (big bar) pull the lower wishbone down so that the strut comes out from under the fender and can be swung out. This has the effect of "pulling" the axle out enough to give you room to get in and remove the circlip on the inner end of the axle and then you can slide the cv joint off and then wash out all of the old grease and reassemble with fresh grease and the new boot and as they say "assembly is the reverse procedure".

Regards

 

Congrats Dave. It feels good when you can overcome a tough problem, doesn't it?

 

JD, Thank you. It certainly was more than expected. Even more so due to my re-assembly mistake. Still, it feels good to have gotten through it.

Michael,

Good input. Thanks.

In my case the joints required a pulley puller to remove from the shaft. In fact, both joints pulled apart rather than come off the shaft. I then had to use the pulley puller a second time to pull the inner race from the shaft. The correct method of pulling a stuck joint is to fabricate a jig to get around the joint and apply force directly to the bottom of the inner race and not the outer. The link above to what I called "the CV Joint page" shows such a jig.

I don't believe that I could have gotten a pulley puller onto the end of the shaft with it in the car, but, to be honest, I didn't actually try. Perhaps with your method there would be room enough?

Also your method will save the ball joint boots. I tore one using an oversized pickle fork. I then reworked an undersized fork to fit and the second ball joint boot leaked a bit of grease, but didn't tear.

The big bonus using your method would be not having to remove the wheel side shaft nut. Getting it off can be difficult. Mine broke free with a half-inch breaker bar. However, getting the 340 ft-lbs required to tighten it back on is also an issue. I tried fabricating an extension for one of my torque wrenches, but it didn't work out as planned. In the end I stood on a pipe extension on my half-inch breaker bar. I broke one breaker bar doing this. The second one held. I was unable to source a three-quarter breaker and 32 mm socket combination. I could not find a three-quarter socket nor a three-quarter to half converter. I'm sure these are readily available; just not near me on short notice.

For those attempting this via the wheel nut method that I used, I recommend a three-quarter breaker bar.

I suppose one could pull the six flange bolts and test the joint for hand removal. Then, if possible, use Michael's method. It certainly would be nice to avoid the ball joint boot problem and the 340 ft-lb nut.

Thank you, Michael.



Yes it does! Thank you, Rob.



Back on the road

 

Glad to hear you got it done Dave, and saved yourself a trip to the shop too!

 

I'm in the middle of this process on my C4.

I used Michael's method of dropping the whole strut/spring rather than destroying the ball joint with a pickle fork - it worked perfectly. I removed one end of the swaybar droplink to give some extra space when pulling the axle out though.

Also, I hit the axle nut with a torch first, then my electric impact was able to spin it off without too much of a hassle. My impact isn't too fancy either.

Now question:

How can you tell if the CV needs replacing? The inboard end felt notchy when I was rotating it around, outboard end is perfectly smooth. After disassembling, all the ball bearings look good with no marks. The inner and outer races are mostly smooth when rolling a bearing in them. However, there are two slots where I can feel a bearing catch a little as I slide it through. Is that enough to replace it?

 

Hi Nick, I would only replace CV joints on the front if there was damage to a ball(s) or clear deep indentations where the ***** had been wearing into the races (the inner or the outer)
There will be noticable wear in the straight ahead position but that should not = replacement.
They are tough parts and are not critical enough to demand "perfect" at all times.
I recall that I could reverse the outer around to give a completely different wear area -- maybe you can do that?
But, I recall that you cannot turn the inner part around as it is one way only.
I also recall thinking that the inner has very little movement compared to the outer, the inner have only the few degrees of the suspension travel, the outer has the range of the steering -- quite a bit more working range (do not know if that observation is of any import!)

 

Sowww,........ you took apart your CV joint

 

Front left axle is done, three axles to go. This has got to be the messiest job ever.

A couple notes - I made sure the cv went back together as the pics on here point out. It took a while to figure out how to rotate the joint to get the ball bearings in one at a time. I tried doing it the wrong way out of curiosity and found that after putting in four of the six ball bearings, the join was pretty well locked in place and not rotating.

Packed with new Redline cv-2 grease, the outer cv now moves around perfectly smoothly. A big difference to the notchy feeling before rebuilding that end. I cleaned out as much grease from the inboard end as possible and re-packed it too for good measure.

I also opted for zip-ties around the new boots. Nice thick ones and dead simple to install.

And to help keep it all in once place:

M8 hex bolts on the half-shats = 39 ft/lbs
Top strut nuts (x4) = 17 ft/lbs

 

Re the zip ties -- I know its "****" but I used two smaller ones and put the "knobby" bits opposite -- so it would stay balanced -- how pedantic is that?