Hello folks,

Curt here with a 1973 2.0 silver 914, located on the central cost of CA Lompoc).

But the subject of this OT post is about a cousin to the 914 (distant cousin perhaps), my Vanagon.

Love this Vanagon…a 1990 2.1 GL with 247,000 miles.
Im the second owner, getting the van early in its life.

Was trying to figure out a problem on the drivers side rear wheel and as part of that troubleshooting effort, I removed the left rear axle.
Thought it might have been a ball that hopped out of one of the races. Nope.
Turned out that both brake shoe linings disintegrated into large pieces that were jamming the rear brake drum in certain areas of rotation.
So, I need to get brakes shoes and am wondering about new drums.

But what I’m really wondering about are the CV joints.
I rotated the joints on that axle through all the range of motions .
Wow....... smooth as good butter.

Held the axle firmly and tried to twist the CV joint, found very little play.
Took the passenger side axle out and found the same thing there.

I have not yet opened them up as I ran out of time and it is a much messier job.
If I were to keep them, I would take them apart and relube with the good stuff.

Wondering the same about the wheel bearings.
With both axles out and the rear wheels off the ground I turned twisted pushed and pulled on the outer edge of the tires with both hands to see if there was any play or roughness.
Again…. smooth as freshly churned butter with very little play.

Can it possibly be that these things don’t need replacing even with that much mileage on them?
I hate to just throw what might be perfectly good OEM Lobro joints in the garbage.

Same for the bearings plus getting at those bearings I believe is a fair bit more work.

Anyway, just wondering what the 914 world folks think.

Thanks

Curt

P.S. I have heard about flipping CV joints around on the same axle to put the less worn part of the joint into play. Any thoughts on that?

I had a 91 and an 85. If you did not have any noise before you took out the axles and you don't see any signs of scoring (blue tint) than you should not need to replace anything.

Repack the bearings and joints.

If there's no indication of irregular wear or heating on the races (also inspect the front spindles), completely clean and inspect everything and repack the bearings with fresh grease. If you do replace them, install new races and the new bearings.

I've also heard that it's OK to reverse the rotation of the CVs, although I've never done it myself. There was a similar thread on this subject last week.

Post your question on the Samba site too

On my '86 syncro /awd with 3.2 911 power, the CVs never failed in 500,000 miles.
The wear +tear parts were: front wheel bearings, drive shaft u-joints....but you have a 2wd, so no worries on the awd parts.
Do have the cv's inspected and greased periodically.

1974 9146gt 3.2 biturbo
1974 914 2.0 club racer
1974 9148gt 5.0 biturbo
1979 930 3.3 turbo
1985 VW v8 LT1 DoKa

How/where do you get post '75 engine swaps smogged?