Flange Wear from CV Joint Options

[frank_c]

Today I started the process of dropping the engine & transmission so that I can send the transmission off to Dr. Evil and take care of some misc engine work (rear main seal, oil return tubes, etc. ). As part of this work I was also hunting for a clunking noise I hear from the back when the car is stopped and as I let the clutch out and the car just starts rolling forward. I already checked and/or replaced all suspension and engine mounts, as well as the outer CV joint bolts (inners are safety wired) and found nothing loose. So next on my list was either the CV joints themselves, or possibly loose flywheel bolts.

When I removed the inner CV joints from the transaxle flanges, I was surprised to see some pretty deep gouges in the flanges from the CV joint inner race/star (see photos below). This seems like a good candidate for the noise I am hearing.

I have never seen this type of wear before with any of the other cars I've worked on - what would cause this? I noticed that there is not much grease in the joints, which I suppose is one possibility. Was the inner race put on backwards? Wrong parts? I did confirm that the axle shaft does move in and out freely at the outer CV joint.

Thanks for any insight.

Left flange:


Right flange:


Circled area shows where inner race is cutting into the flange.

[frank_c]

A quick update on this topic.

I got some time to pull the left axle shaft tonight, and I was surprised by what I found in the outer CV joint when I removed the stub-axle:



I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but the grease is very dry and thick. So much so that it took some effort to simply pivot the CV joint around the axle, and even more effort to move it in/out axially. And oddly, when I would move the outer race of the CV, there was so much friction that the balls would not roll in the cage, but just slide back and forth.

I suspect that the wear seen on the inner flange is due to the bad grease in the outer CV preventing the axle from floating freely between the inner and outer flanges. Maybe the grease is simply very old, but it doesn't even look like CV joint grease to me. I'm wondering if a PO packed it with something like wheel bearing grease.

I have new axle kits from PMB arriving this week, but out of curiosity I'll clean and inspect the old CV joints this weekend to see how much damage there is.