dfinnegan

I'm in the process of replacing the inner CV Boots on the front of my 1991 C4 coupe.

I decided to try and do this without pulling the Half Shafts, but it turns out there simply is not enough room to pull the CV Joint off the inbound side of the shaft. Even though the joint freely slides on the shaft now that it's unbolted. (Edit: Actually, it was the inner and outer races moving in and out in relation to one another. The inner race was firmly affixed to the shaft. )

It appears that for the front CV Joints on a C4 the Half Shafts must be removed in order to replace the boot.

The instructions in the Workshop Manual indicate that the wishbone drop link to sway bar attachment must be separated. Nut #11, bolt #12 in the diagram below. Okay.

Then the Joint Carrier (ball joint at wheel carrier) must be removed. Nut #14 to ball joint #30 in the diagram below. The ball joint unit is then to be pressed out using special tool Nexus 169-1. Which, of course, I do not have.

Now for my questions:

1) Is there a simple "cheater" way to press out the ball joint that won't damage it?

2) What are the consequences of opening up the suspension in this way?

- 2a) is it going to drop? (Edit: Nope.)
- 2b) must it be supported with a jack? (Edit: No, but having one handy helps in positioning things for access/reassembly)
- 2c) will this entail re-alignment? (Edit: Nope.)

3) Once the ball joint and drop link are free, how does the wheel/suspension move in order to free up the half shaft? It appears to be rather well bound in to the space it's in. Will the disc ***'y swing out? Down? (Edit:The wishbone is pushed downward to free the ball joint (onced pressed free) and then the wheel carrier ***'y swings outward to release the shaft.)

Basically I'm looking for input here to judge if I am in over my head on this one.

For reference I've so far successfully change out the distributor belt, power steering drive shaft seal, adjusted the valves, and R&R'd the injectors among other, more mundane, maintenance items. (Edit: And now the front CV's :-))

Having never worked on cars before this one, and relying upon my car as a daily driver, I'm always a bit apprehensive about breaking things apart. Any input, advice or encouragement would be appreciated.

Thanks!
Dave

LouZ

I just checked the PET, and your front halfshaft looks just like the rears. Although, I have a C2, it appears that the procedure is about the same based on the parts.

The key to the removal is in a circlip (also called the "lockring" part #6 in the PET) within the inner CV joint. After unbolting the inner joint from the Dif, tap off the metal cover (bronze color) on the end of the CV. Now things get sloppy... inside there is a +/- 1" circlip that has to be removed. Once that is out, the inner CV joint will slide off of the shaft. Then it is a simple, but greasy, job of replacing the boot, refilling the joint with the grease, reinserting the CV back on the shaft spline, reinstalling the circlip and end cap.

Then rebolt the axle to the Dif. The book states to use 8 new bolts to fasten the halfshaft back up (I didn't ).

Good luck, and be sure to have the correct tool for popping out the circlip as this makes all the difference!

dfinnegan

Lou,

Thanks. The trouble isn't the circlip, it's the space. There simply is not enough room to slide the joint off the shaft with the shaft still in the car. At least, I can't seem to find the room. Moving the shaft up, down or side to side, it just won't clear the mount flange so there's no hope of pulling the joint; with or without the circlip :-)

Thus my questions about the suspension bits required to be removed in order to pull the shaft.

I'm still curious about the procedure for handling the suspension once the requisite pieces have been disconnected.

Anyone have any experience with the C4 fronts?

Thanks.

And thanks, again, for the input, Lou. I really do appreciate it.

Dave

LouZ

As Roseanna Roseannadanna used to say: Never Mind!

Hope you figure it out! Hate to see you having to disassemble the front end just to change out a boot.

Heirsh

I am not familiar with the c4 bits, but you can easily release the top of the strut from the trunk area and let the arm droop more if that will give you the clearance you need. The fit up there is pretty tight, so i doubt you would mess with the alignment at all.

dfinnegan

I've pushed ahead.

The big nut #1 is off and the half shaft is loose. The drop link nut #11 is off and the joint is apart. The ball joint nut #14 is off.

I've checked Pelican, a local Porsche dealer and searched the internet for the special tool Nexus 169-1. Not found.

Now, how do I press the ball joint #30 out of the wheel carrier?

Rocket Rob

Dave,

I haven't removed the ball joint on my C-4 but on other cars, I have used a pickle fork or a ball joint press tool. Autozone loans tools and carries one. You may want to give it a look.

http://www.autozone.com/in_our_store...oint_press.htm

dfinnegan

Rob,

Thanks for the input. I've definitely learned something about ball joints and tools.

Unfortunately, my description was not quite up to par as I'm not actually trying to push the ball joint out of its place. If you look at the diagram the ball joint in question is circled in red and numbered #30. The ball joint, itself, is seated in the bracket that is also mostly circled.

The stud coming out of the ball joint, however, has a shoulder which presses into one of the spider-like arms coming off the wheel carrier and is secured with nut #14. Having removed nut #14 I can't get the stud to drop out of the wheel carrier connection.

That Nexus 169-1 must be one interesting looking tool!

dfinnegan

Rob,

I've been reading and searching and, you're right. The Nexus 169-1 is a pickle fork! The attached image is from the Shop Manual.

So, how does the pickle fork work without damaging the rubber boot of the ball joint? Is there a shoulder down under the boot?

Dave

garrett376

Pickle fork!
It will pop out the ball joint from the hub. Dave, read this:

http://www.extremehowto.com/xh/artic...ticle_id=60227

I'd go borrow a pickle fork from the auto parts store. If you leave the ball joint itself attached to the a-arm, and leave the strut mounts attached to the hub, you should not need to re-align the front end.

Good luck!!!

dfinnegan

In the interest of the community I'm going to share my latest update with my front CV boot replacement project despite the pain it brings to publicly admit my own stupidity!

First the good news . . .

I've spoken to a couple of professionals (thank you gentleman!!) and learned that the procedure I'm following is, in fact, the correct one:

• Remove the half shaft from the car
• Remove the inner CV Joint from the half shaft
• Replace the boots
• Clean, reassemble, repack with grease and replace the inner CV Joint
• Replace the half shaft in the car

Removing the half shaft requires:

• Remove axle nut (wheel side)
• Remove lower ball joint nut and pop ball joint taper from carrier with a pickle fork
• Remove the lower drop link bolt to sway bar connection
• Remove six flange bolts at inner CV Joint
• By careful manipulation with a hydraulic jack upon the hub, remove half shaft from car

Now the bad news:

• Separating the lower ball joint may damage the ball joint boot. I tore mine.
• Pulling the inner joint from the shaft may result in pulling the joint apart rather than pulling it from the shaft. Mine came apart.
• Reassembly of the joint must be done correctly or damage will result. I damaged mine.

The lower ball joint must be separated from the wheel carrier with a pickle fork. There is another tool for this job which is safer, but it won't fit on this lower ball joint. Use of the correct 20 mm pickle fork will likely improve your chances of doing this without damage. I used an english equivalent and it was the wrong size and tore my boot. This is bad news as there is no way to replace the ball joint boot. Instead, the lower ball joint must be replaced. This is an alignment element, thus requiring a fresh alignment job.

Pulling the inner CV joint from the shaft will likely require a puller and if you aren't careful you may pull the joint apart, as I did, rather than remove it from the shaft. The puller will pull upon the outer race of the joint (actually the cover). This may work. However, in my case it simply pulled the outer race, inner cage and all six ***** over the inner race and off the shaft leaving the inner race still on the shaft. I expect I could fabricate some sort of jig (wood or metal) to reach up inside the shaft-side CV Joint cover to support the inner race rather than just pulling upon the outer race in order to pull the entire joint intact from the shaft.

I looked at Jason's excellent pictures (below), and his write-up, along with several others, but still managed to get the assembly wrong. I kept reading Jason's pictures as large end and small end and thought the inner and outer races were asymmetrical. In fact, these pieces appear to be perfectly symmetrical. The point that Jason is so clearly making in the pictures, which I entirely missed , is that the grooves cut into the races which house the ***** are not straight along the axis of the shaft. They are cut at angles. There are six grooves that make three sets of V's inside the outer race and on the outside of the inner race. Proper assembly requires that these V's be offset. The wide end of the outer V must line up with the small end of the inner V. I expect you all can see that clearly, but some how I missed it and focused very carefully on keeping the inner and outer race end alignment in proper order and managed to reassemble with the V's matching. I may have driven all of several hundred feet at 5 mph with this arrangement. Out my drive way, left, uh oh!, turn around, back in the garage. By this time I had broken the cage and damaged the inner race pretty good. Aye cur rumba!

I expect that my inner CV joints were already bad as I've been hearing a clicking sound which, by searching the internet, I've learned is likely bad joints. I simply don't know how long the boots were torn and they were both torn wide open. In the end I expect I would have needed new joints anyway, but I'm now concerned about the forces required to break the one cage and the implications of that. I'll be ordering new joints and keeping my fingers crossed.

My apologies for the ultra-long post, but my hopes are that someone will learn from my mistakes.

All the best,
Dave

FYI: I've termed the three parts visible in the following pictures as inner race, outer race and cage, where cage is the center piece that holds the ***** in place. Jason has labeled these: inner race, outer cage and <no label>.

JasonAndreas

I'm amazed that you were able to bolt the cv-joint to the front axle transmission with the inner & outer race misaligned. I (unintentionally) tried and tried but couldn't do it. Was the outer joint already pushed through the wheel carrier or did you start on the inner joint first? If you fit the outer joint first there is no way (or rather I couldn't) to bolt up the inner joint with the races misaligned.

I will correct the labels in my photos (thanks!) and I think I have a better way to diagram the proper alignment so what happened to you won't happen to others. My photoshop skills have progressed (a little bit) beyond arrows so I can probably highlight the parts of the inner & outer race that the arrows are pointing at and add some more arrows.

dfinnegan

I had loosely bolted up the inner joint, then the wheel nut, then torqued down the inner bolts. I think it has to do with how the joint is miss-assembled. It ends up locked, but, I believe, can be locked in different positions?

Upon disassembly the inner joint had pulled itself apart with the outer race, cage and ***** moving out-bound on the shaft. The six bolts on the flange were tight. The wheel-side nut was tight.

The cage is broken through with about a half inch piece missing on one side. The inner race is peened over on the side where the ***** exited. The ***** are scored. One baddly. The outer race is also peened over at the exit.

I can see the peening, but it wasn't evident until I got it all cleaned up and felt it first with my fingers. Knowing it's there, and in good light, I can now see the peening. I have to look for the scoring on the *****. Once found, it's obvious, but it takes a little fiddling to find the ones with marks. The missing piece on the cage is, well, obvious, but I hadn't realized it was cracked right through for quite a while.

I've managed to get the joint back together the correct way, but it was a real trick. It does not move smoothly. I expect the tolerances are tight and the small bit of distortion I've created is causing the joint to bind a bit.

I came across a page on the internet which has a good write-up of CV Joints. It's based on VW parts, but the process is the same. The joint parts look identical! Here is the link to the CV Joint page.

Jason, if you are more interested in the failed joint I can take pictures, or post it to you, though, ultimately, I would like to keep it on my desk as a reminder to take it slow and be more careful. I used to keep a broken piece of a motorcycle clutch lever. First as a key fob! Later as a desk ornament. It served me well.

JasonAndreas

I don't think I need to have it in my possession but if you could post a photo, that might be helpful to others? Just to stress the importance of properly aligning the inner & outer race?

dfinnegan

Sorry for the poor quality . . . cell phone pics.

The joint is reassembled and it was too difficult (given it's state of damage) to pull it apart again right now.

Note that the cage is broken all the way through, but the lower break is clean crack and it must be pulled apart to see it.

The ***** are also scratched, but I can't get a picture without disassembly.

The pics are not very useful, I'm afraid. But, as Jason has so aptly pointed out, do take the time to put these back together correctly!


Edit: I took some better pics with a proper camera.
The scratches on the bearings are worse than they look in the photos.
Also, the joint is quite sloppy compared with the new ones which I picked up last night. The old damaged joint moves freely (in some positions, binds in others) while the new joint must be pushed rather firmly to move at all, but moves very smoothly.