It's hard to tell in the photos, but there is some pretty good pitting on the two races that are on the transmission side of the axles. I was going to swap them with the races on the other side of the respective axles, but upon further inspection, one looks like it is developing a crack.
I would hate to have gone through all of this trouble to rebuild the CV joints only to have them fail on me later.
If the consensus, is yes, they should be replaced, does anyone have a set I could buy? These are NLA, right?

Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

I'm no expert on cv's, but i was taught to not mix the races, balls and cages. There are a couple of guys here that modify the type I beetle cv's to work with the 914 axle, so "new" is available. Look in the member vendors forum.

Garbage. The balls and outer races are worn as well in this case.

The factory used to sell the cv components as separate part numbers but it stopped at some point. Some manufacturers have the races numbered in size categories and, on my own car, I have been known to use assembled cv's on a street car. But I can mic the balls to .0001in and be certain that I have used a good lens to look at the surfaces. That said I would never do it to a customer car.

Good luck!

http://www.pmbperformance.com/catalog/item...868/3857681.htm

is your question ... how many miles do you think i can get out of these ??

my guess is probably thousands ??

that said - our cars generally need just about every part replaced.

jim

Ooops, where to buy them, Zims had some a couple of years ago but they were terribly expensive. PMB looks pretty good at that rate.

You can have someone local do it for your stock vw cv's if you trust the machine shop, but I'd get the cost first and add it to the cv cost to compare.

The outer races look great, actually. Not sure why there would be such a difference.
Although, all of the balls have been mixed with one another, so no easy way to tell which were matched to which race at this point.

this is not making me happy.

rjames,

You should not reuse these CV joints! The worst part is getting them out of the car and since they are well worn and pitted, they will only get worse at an increasing rate.

I also see the classic "at ride height" wear grooves that produce a "CLUNK" when you go on-off-on with the throttle. With new joints, that will go away.

However, I just searched for 914 CVs and could only find that at AutoAtlanta for $107 ea. YIKES! If you can't handle the high price, you may HAVE to put them back in the car. With luck, you might be able to find good used parts in classifieds.

best of luck,
Terry

With all of the work I've done to remove them and clean everything, I guess it doesn't make sense to take a chance and reuse these. However, this started as a clutch and rear wheel bearing replacement, so to add another $400 for CVs may just mean that the car sits in the garage until next summer.

I should at least check with Eric at PMB to see if he'll sell me part of the 'kit' since I just bought new cv bolts, and the boots and washers I have are all in great shape.

Gosh, if

1. it were ME, and I mean just ME, and
2. it's a stock horse-power car on the street, and
3. it meant not driving the car for another year and
4. you can't find somebody with better looking used ones...

I'd turn 'em around backwards and run 'em! Then search or save up for new ones when I'm not behind the wheel.

It's all about the drivin'.