Outer Lh Cv Joint Replacement

[El Saundo]

Hi Guys,

Anybody changed an outer CV joint before? After hearing some occasional strange knocking sounds from the left hand side of my car the other day I jacked it up and found a giant split half the way round the circumference of the outer CV boot which has obviously bled all the grease away.

My question is wether there are any pitfalls in changing it out? I have a replacemnet joint, boot nad grease and I think I've got a pretty good idea of what I need to do; remove the split pin and nut of the old one, remove the bolts between the wishbone and ball joint, cut out the old boot and use some 'gentle persuation' to seperate both spline connections, then grease up the new one, slide the new boot onto the drive shaft followed by the joint and so forth in the opposite to removal.

Anybody done this themselves before and can advise if I'm going a long the right lines?

Any guidance would be much appreciated.

Cheers

[chrisgen6]

Sorry cant help out but if you do it can u let me know how easy it is as mine is making a noise too and needs changing, thanks for any help.

[Dan_Q]

absolutely spot on sir, that procedure sounds about right

I've swapped a complete shaft, and the hardest bit was removing the shaft from the box- but as you say you won't need to do that if your just changing the outer joint.

The only tricky bit I can think of is splitting the outer joint off the shaft with it on the car- I put mine in a vice and drifted it off with a hammer and punch, but of course you won't have that option.

I also wrestled with the ball joint to wishbone flange nuts and the bolt, IIRC one of the nuts and the bolts were seized. Plenty of penetratiing oil and patience got the bolt out, but I had to split one of the flanged nuts to crack it off.

Good luck with the job, hope it goes well :) and of course (without trying to sound patronising) make sure the hub nut is torqued properly.

[El Saundo]

Cheers for the input. Got round to doing the job on Saturday, had to wait to get my hands on a deep 30mm socket. The only tricky bit I had was getting the old one off and the new one onto the driveshaft. I really had to whack the crap out of it to get it over the circlip on the drive shaft. However, it seems that the outer CV joint wasn't causing the noise after all, but was a seperate unrelated problem. I'm still getting a sort of clicking when applying and coming off the power, and knocking over some bumps

Could this mean the inner CV, ball joint or wheel bearing or something has gone?

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Dan_Q]

could be totally wrong, and i don't mean to sound condescending, but did you torque up the hub nut correctly? I didn't after changing my shaft, and once re-torqued the noise disappeared. I put the weight of the car on the roadwheel with the centre cap of the alloy off, and torqued through the centre of the wheel.

Other than that, it could be a worn hub- but you'd notice this in the usual way for checking a wheel bearing I think. other than that i'm out of ideas!