Not a huge amount has happened regarding the engine. Should have an update in a few weeks though
A seemingly constant issue with the car has been suspension related noise. I do run rose joints but some noises just aren't meant to be there. I'd been getting a creaking on steering and some very horrible noises when braking hard but only when the car/weather was hot. Really weird. Literally everything has been changed apart from the offside driveshaft and wheel bearings on the front. I had known the boot on the inner CV joint had gone so assumed/hope that at least one of the two noises was that. I sourced another shaft as the inner joint felt like it had a lot of play. Found a Mk4 R32 nearside one in the UK and arranged for it to be sent here (yes, cheap couriers do exist
) which I planned to cannibalise the joints from. Also grabbed two OE boot kits and two TRW (OEM) ball joints to fit while I was there. I couldn't feel any play in the current ones but it's hard to test them sometimes so I figured it was worth doing them while I was under there.
So anyway, here's the donor shaft which was in pretty good nick (only 35k on it)
Grease looked good:
Then I split both driveshafts. My original CV joints didn't feel that bad but it can't do any harm having some fresher ones in. The bonus being that the CVs spent their life being driven the other way around so should last a bit longer. I'll transfer my old joints to the center shaft and make another good shaft since I had to buy another boot kit (more on that later!):
The donor joints cleaned up as best I could without splitting them apart. I didn't think it was worth it after seeing the condition of the grease:
This was a bit worrying though. Wear on the inner CV joint cap. Possibly due to someone cracking the end of the cap too hard but I was worried the joint could have been under too much pressure perhaps?
Assembling the shaft was reasonably straight forward apart from getting the OE boots on which are more plastic than rubber. Anyhow, here's the complete shaft ready to go:
Cleaned up the area and refitted the shaft:
Sweet. A job well done I thought. Took it for a test drive and it was going well until I went full lock pulling out of a junction and bang clatter clatter. Something sounded horrible. I had a quick look under but couldn't see anything. Luckily I could coast home but getting up the driveway was another matter, it was obvious something had gone wrong, I'd lost drive to the right wheel. ****. Got it to the garage and I could move the shaft around! It'd popped off the outer joint and I knew exactly what it was. The ****** ******** retaining clip on the outer joint. I'd fitted it and the washers in the correct way but it's hard to tell when the joint has fully located. A tip for anyone doing the job, don't put too much grease on the joint when you fit it to the shaft initially. Put as much as you can on while still being able to see the joint has fully seated against the plastic washer.
I'd joked to Tuffty that I might be working from home on Monday and yep. I took the day off to finish my half ***** job. Luckily the joint was fine. It'd locked up and a few balls had fallen into the boot but no major damage thank god. I called VW and got a quote for the 120g tube of grease and a new strap but he said that it'd cost $70 and a new boot kit with bolt, clamps etc was the same price. In hindsight I should have just bought the kit for the earlier cars (which is seemingly shared by loads of cars). It's about $20 cheaper because the bolt isn't included (earlier uses a nut) which seems to add a fair bit to the cost. There was only 1 left in Australia of the kit I got! That's how easy it is to get parts here haha. Had to refit the CV in situ as of course I couldn't easily undo the inner bolts as the whole diff wanted to spin. I made sure it was fully seated this time
Did a load of full lock tests and they went ok.
Alignment on Tuesday at East Coast Suspension (it's massively out - I did it by eye) - hopefully there's some tasty Porsches there.
IMG_0883.jpg by Sam_, on Flickr![[Dave B]](/xf/data/avatars/m/0/100.jpg?1478806902){kind=avatar}
