Inside CV joint fell apart

[krammer]

1990 944S2 - 130Kmiles

2 weeks ago I posted about my 944 losing power to the drive train. I finally got around to checking it out. The left inside CV joint fell apart, but...... I saw NO damage to the CV parts.

Has anybody heard of this? I didnt think there was enough room in the assembled condition for this to happen.

Last spring I replaced both sides with a new axle with assembled CV joints.
All I had to do was put the lube in... only thing, I could tell they were a rebuild, and not new parts except the drive axles were brand new. I was a bit dissapointed but figured it would work.

As I cleaned up the CV parts today, I could not see any excessive wear.

Maybe too much tolerance on the parts??

What happened 2 weeks ago was I needed to excelerate fast and might have popped the clutch accidently, it was then when I heard it let go with a big bang. Thought it was the clutch.

It looks like I could just put it back to gether and reinstall it... Probably be a better idea to swap ends... with the initial torque going to the inside joint first.

[MB968]

We sold a lot of grinders to make these when they were first designed and were called rzeppa joints. As I recall, they are held together by at least one circlip, probably two. If your's fell apart, likely one of the circlips came out of the groove, or was never in there.

You may have already done this, but to inspect a joint, clean/rinse out all the grease with a solvent. Give all the parts a visual inspection for marring of the balls and mating surfaces. Also look for any change of color due to the joint getting hotter than it should during use. If any of the parts have a straw color to them they have gotten hot enough to loose some of the original heat treat. If any of the above point to issues, I'd not reuse them.

And even if they look OK, since the cost is so low, unless you want to take a chance on there being an issue with the joint, you may just want to get a new one. They can be rebuilt, just make sure you get a high quality CV joint grease if you choose to reuse the joint. If you find it was missing the circlip, or if it came out of the groove, then I'd go back to the supplier to get a replacement.

[krammer]

Therer was no missing clips... but it was visible that the outer edge of the splined gear had some unusal wear next to the slip ring and where the ball bearings move in and out of. It looked apparent that this is where it slipped out of place.