Axle & CV Rebuild, Any tips or tricks? Options

[Lawrence]

I guess the subject says it all. I've got grease and new boots. Any special places I should look for wear? Are there specs I should check?

As much as I curse the previous owner sometimes, he did something nice. Hex socket bolts in the CV joings. Woohoo... no more triple square socket!

-Rusty

[Lawrence]

Bump?

[garyh]

Hi There,

Couple of things:

1) Be ready for one of the nastiest, messiest jobs in your life. (Way worse than a baby with the flu, and I've cleaed up after both.)

2) Allen bolts are not "better" than triple-square bolts. If it were me, I'd put the right bolts back in. Unless you really like cleaning axles out of transmission housings...

I used 'Castrol Super Clean' followed by brake cleaner to clean the joints. Worked pretty well.

Put a big cotter under the boot-lip at the axle. It allows the joint to breathe.

Other than that, it's pretty straight-forward.

Gary.

PS: I have tons of parts left over from when I did mine. Let me know if you break anything.

[Lawrence]

I have a full set of new boots in my kitchen cupboard (where do you keep YOUR parts, huh?) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

My plan was to cut the boots off of the axles, and just dump them whole into the solvent sinks at work.

-Rusty (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smoke.gif)

[TMorr]

If you are planning on keeping the CV's, set yourslef up so that you can disassemble each joint, with each ball, the cage and the body all clocked for position.
An egg crate is a good storage container.
Key is to put the same ball back into the same socket in the body and the cage located in the same position too.
This way, any assymmetric wear is replicated on reassembly. If you dont do this, the small balls might end up in the big holes and then the big balls take all the load in the small holes.....so to speak!
Another key factor, make sure the end of each axle gets located in it's original place, eg RH inboard, goes back to RH inboard. This means the CV and axle will be rotating in the same direction, subject to the same loads etc, not new loads, new wear patterns etc, that all work poorly on already worn parts.
Even though a 914 is not a powerful machine, the axles wil have taken a "set" where they have a slight twist in sympathy with the way the torque has been applied.
12.9 grade cap head screws offer the most durable fastener solution, the hex is more tolerant to misalignment for the many times you might be checking the torque in future years.
I generally replace the bolts every time, to avoid the frstration of having a bodgy hex, or worse the dreaded bodgy triple square!!. Bolts are cheap - a box of top qaulity HoloKrome M8 x 50 cap head screws in 12.9 grade is $26.68 / 100 - cant beat 27¢ per bolt.
There are a lot of opinons about grease, just dont use too much, the weight of grease in the boot is a real cause of premature failure and leakage.

Regards

Hayden PTBT

[mskala]

Bolts are cheap - a box of top qaulity HoloKrome M8 x 50 cap head screws in 12.9 grade is $26.68 / 100 - cant beat 27¢ per bolt.

Hey if anybody wants to buy a box, I'll take 20 of those
off your hands.

BTW Rusty I think allen was standard on the -6.

[Lawrence]

Hayden,

Now THAT's good info. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beer.gif) I would have thought that rotating everything would be a good thing to keep wear even overall. I guess I was 180 out.

I'll start bumming egg cartons from folks at work, my kitchen isn't terribly domestic. (But I did make another HUGE batch of killer chili last night.)

BTW Rusty I think allen was standard on the -6.

Figures. My DAPO couldn't have done anything this cool.

-Rusty (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smoke.gif)

[TMorr]

I guess I should have qualified my advice by adding that re-using all the parts assumes they are in suitable condition to be re-used.
Scoring, galling or flaking & cracking harness, are all obvious signs that the parts have reached the end of their useful life, new boots and grease will be wasted - along with the aggro of rebuilding them.

Crack's are a little harder to detect and not very likely. Most likely place for cracks will be in the cage, where other obvious wear and distortion will alert you to checking most thoroughly.

Regards

Hayden PTBT