Help needed - Is my CV and axle toast?
 

Decided to rebuild my passenger side CV b/c the boot was torn on my '83SC. Removal of the axle from the tranny and wheel went reasonably well, as did the disassembly of the joints themselves. I had no trouble replacing the joint on one side of the axle. When it came time for the other side...not so much.

The CV is on...but it was HARD to put on - as in, whacks of the hammer hard (with a block of wood to spread the load, and then using a drift and more hammer whacks around the perimeter of the inner race to get it fully seated with the circlip at the end of the axle).

Has anyone had this happen? I did swap the inner and outer sides of the axle and CV joints to extend the life of the assembly. I worry that the splines on the inner race were not aligned properly on re-seating.

Thanks for the input Pelicans!

Yes.
As long as the circlip is fully seated you are good.

You may have it assembled wrong
CV Assembly
This is a good read

Seemed to drive fine today. The mushrooming part is interesting. I'm going to do new axles next year, I am thinking I just stay put for now. Thanks for the link, very helpful!

I just went through the same thing last week " drives good but just somthing different
I bought new Cv,s going to put them in today.

Yes, nothing quite like throwing good money after bad...

When you say "different" - how do you mean? Do you feel more/less power to the side you didn't refurb?

Where in DC are you? I'm in Montgomery County.

Let me know how it goes with the new install.

Sometimes CVs are snug on the splines, so you have to drive the axle out when removing the CV. Sometime they are not snug.

Either way, you could not possibly drive a CV on without the splines being lined up. Just as you could not drive on a CV which had X splines onto an axle which had X+1 or X-1 splines. This isn't like cross threading a nut or bolt (which is all too easy sometimes).

Craig Watkins, a race engineer who was part of Smart Products when it was in business, preferred axles without the inner collars, and with longer splines. He liked the CV inner to be able to slide along the splines, at least for race cars. He believed, based on his experience racing off road in Mexico, that allowing the CV inner to move less relative to the outer was good, and letting the splines take up the change of effective length as the suspension moved was good. With that kind of a setup you need the splines to slide freely.

But the 911s are set up so there is little or no motion at the splines, so the fact that the CV inner is very tight on the splines really doesn't matter at all. The axle shown in the California site isn't a stock SC axle - you can see it doesn't have an inner shoulder. So for ours, I don't see an issue if you have to pound or press things on. Obviously, this will make them that much harder to get off later, so there is a value in cleaning up splines. But not essential, as in no reason to take things apart again just to do that.

Yes, had a couple of good rides today, no issues, I think I am good for now. Thanks for the great explanation!

I can't really pin it " I completely took apart one side. Just really cleaned the other side
The one I took apart just felt iffy hard o explain. I have the huge 40mm 930 Cv,s that are like
5 pounds each possibly the one is just shot. And ther s some odd weight misplaced .

I'm in Montgomery also. Down the block from Seneca state park