Broke a C.V. Joint

[James]

I was driving along happily today, went over a bump and BANG, I have a broken CV joint. The car had been making funny noises for the last couple of days turning right but I thought it was the shaft scraping on the dump, but now I think it was my broken cv joint filling its bearings with shards of metal and grating away.

Then when I went over the bump it pulled the guts out far enough for one of the bearing thingies to fall off the driveshaft and thus killing my joint.

On the plus side I had broken it, pulled it out replaced it and got the car all back together in about 2 hours I had a spare driveshaft lying around so stole the bits from that to make my cv work again.

[Hyperblade]

ouch  :o

funny you should mention noises, ive been getting one when turning left sharply, think i might check it out :S

That will teach you not to thrash the thing

[James]

Yeah I recon, It might have had something to do with it i was doing about 5000rpm in 2nd when it broke :p

[John_S.]

...And you know what this just proves that none of us should be throwing anything away if it is still useable, because as these cars get older lots of parts will become unavailable. If I had some remote i.e.rural acres at my disposal, I would have been collecting these old 1st and 2nd Gen cars for years now. NOTHING beats the time saved by not having to go to a parts store. ;D Especially if they are going to tell you you need to wait for the part to come in after a special order.
Well done Bigelboe.
BTW on the side...was the 20.00 what you considered to be a total for the Turbo camcover? I still haven't recieved an Email from you. Did you try to send another ?

[John_S.]

Oh yeah, BTW hyperblade et al, those CV's will talk to you for quite some time as long as the boots are good and you don't "abuse" them ;D . Just don't mix and match sub parts from CV's, as like all bearings  gear sets etc , they wear in together and mixing them around usually cases premature failure.
What I mean is replace the entire inner assembly as a unit including the outer case. ( Bigelboe I know this is how you did it, without asking) I've got one on my 4-DR that would probably grenade itself if I pull the 5000RPM stunt, but I'm hoping it will survive the winter months, and I'll replace it in spring.

[James]

I replaced the outer case and the bearings inside but i couldnt replace the bearing holder because the splines on the end of the shaft were different for some very very strange reason. Im having more damn problems with drivetrain now, really pissing me off.

[James]

John, would you have any clues as to why i have a screeching sound upon applying power in my car? And I also have a random noise that sounds like really bad straight cut gears running, all only since the last few days.

[James]

Both noises are related to speed so i figure its something after the engine and the main shaftof the gearbox. the screeching sounds liek a rock in the brakes but it isnt  >:(

[John_S.]

Wow, I was afraid of that possibility. You may have done internal damage to the tranny when you lost the axle CV at speed like that. I hope that is not the case. First thing I would do is drain the oil from the tranny and look for metal floating around in it. Hopefully there isn't any. In any case I would start up a collection of good used trannies while you can still find them.
I once lost the diffie, I think due to the tranny being low on oil.  When it let go and locked up the tranny because the motor was still spinning it sheared the outer clutch disc from the inner part that splines onto the mainshaft.  :o
I used the inner part to make a mainshaft holder tool for when I need to dismantle one of these trannies. ;D
Anyone downunder been able to source a reliable supplier for internal rebuild parts for these older Honda gearboxes?

[James]

I have no idea about rebuild parts, Ive never enquired about rebuilding one. All the syncros in the box are farked anyway so I was thinking about rebuilding it, I just need it to get me home, which is about 200kms.
Im not terribly happy with it at the moment   :-[.

I know of where I can get a turbo 1 gearbox, but then I cant use my lightened flywheel are decent clutch, might be the only way to keep my car going tho.

[Mike_NZ]

Try Geartech Automotive on Tremain ave, haven't used them myself but I've heard good things. Don't know how much it'll cost.

[James]

Yeah, I can rebuild it myself, just need to find all the bits, I hope I can get a gearset in good nick, or that mine isnt to buggered, then all I need is bearings and syncro stuff.

[John_S.]

Haven't heard, did you make it home on your tranny? Is the noise still there?

[James]

I am going home next saturday. I think I have possibly found my problem.

I took the wheel of, front passenger todayand noticed something funny. When you turn the wheel around the axle moves slightly while the hub stays still, like that cv joint isnt bolted in square into the hub.

Ok so when we mounted the city turbo engine in the new body it didn't seem to be in exactly the right place, a little off to the passenger side, we still dont know why there is this difference, we figure it must be slight differences in engine bay dimensions.

But anyway, it didnt seem to cause any problems, everything worked great, until colza noticed a while later that if you jacked the right hand side of the car up and tried to spin the wheel it moves the whole engine, he at first though it was a wheel bearings, because the wheel was shakey on the hub. He soon worked out that this was because the hub nut had worked its way loose even tho the little deformable bit was pushed in the side. He attributed this, and the engine movement to a bent axle. Unfortunately all this was happening just before he was due to drive it 400km's to my house to deliver it, so he tightened the nut up, and went to the parts place where he got the rebuilt axle and told them it was bent so they gave him another one.

So he drove it down to me, i drive it around for a while, it was all good, then eventually I got around to replacing the "bent" axle. I did this and it didn't appear to make any difference, so I just left it.

After breaking my CV joint and learning how they work inside I cam to realise why the engine was moving when you jacked up the left hand side and turned the wheel, it was because the inboard CV joint, the one that adjusts for length was bottoming out, this was confirmed by noting it was happening 3 times per rotation, one time for each of the bearing thingies.
However it doesnt happen when the car is at normal ride height because the suspension geometry ensures the shaft is pulled far enough out of the joint to not bottom out.

Anyway so it all comes back to today, when I pulled the left front wheel, and put a brick under the lower control arm and let it off the jack, this ment i could freely spin the wheel without the cv bottoming out.

I was spinning the wheel and noticed that the shaft appeard to be wobbling, so i took a ruler and held it against the shaft just inwards of the outer boot and braced my hand on the hub, it appears that the shaft at that end is travelling eccentrically by about 1mm, that is the outside of the shaft moves through a distance of 1mm from a fixed point as it rotates.

So I guess this means my hub is buggered, something is awry thats stopping the cv from bolting down properly to the inside of the hub, am I correct in thinking that this would probably cause the inner bearing to wear out real quick and would possibly be the cause of my slight steering wheel shake at about 70km/h?

Would very worn inner wheel bearings also answer my horrible grating noise questions?

The wheel bearings were renewed within the last 10,000kms, perhaps the mechanic who pressed them in screwed it up somehow?

Anyway, I am going to get my dad to courier me over my spare LHS hub that I have sitting at home and hopefully that fixes my troubles enough till I can get home and redo the engine mounts to make the engine sit in the right place!

[John_S.]

Just remember the words of the wise old sage..."never a dull moment" ::)