Shattered CV joint

[smiff1 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close smiff1]

Travelled 1.5hrs to the Cobaw forest today with a few people, all was going well for the first hour having a ball, then came time for the hillclimb..... then it went to sh#t .. grabbed some air and came down on the spinning wheel... BANG she went... that was the end of my day... strapped the driveshaft to the bottom of the shock and limped home 2wd..
so now the question is How hard is it to replace the cv joint on the wheel side??? unsure if there is any damage to drive shaft either (not sure how to tell ) ... or how much would it cost to take it to a mechanic to do?? thanks

[FIS9076 Member Find all posts View Profile Close FIS9076]

Hey mate,
I wouldn't be to concerned with other damage, Ive ended up doing one or two cv's and everything else has always been fine...

The drivers side is much easier to do than the passenger side, but both fairly straight forward tasks.

Id usually replace the whole shaft (Id recommend genuine over aftermarket - unless your able to find some moly ones somewhere - Ive asked but don't think anyone makes them anywhere) and cheaper from a wrecker rather than new - I always go for nicer looking cars that probably haven't even been offroad if possible for parts.

Basically (very basically) loosen wheel, jack up front end/side of car need to work on and use stands, place jack under lower control arm, remove wheel, I find it easier to remove top and bottom ball joints (at least on the challenger setup) if on the passenger side, you need to leave bottom connected, and use it at a lever to pop out the inner spline in diff - can be tricky depending on how good/bad your cv's are - on the drivers side its just a matter of undoing the 4 bolts on the extension shaft. obviously you need to remove the outer spline from the hub too....if you've got both ball joints off, you can do it all really easily, otherwise you might get it with just forcing the hub out/down with the top ball joint off....

Also, to strengthen the mitsu cv joints, Ive heard of people putting a reinforcing ring of steel pipe around the outside of the cv's as when they go, its usually the outer housing that is to blame...just a matter of getting the right side pipe for a tight fit, heating it up to expand, pressing it on, and allowing to cool.

Dan

[smiff1 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close smiff1]

thanks for that..
managed to figure it all out, took me 30 minutes to take it out but 2 half hours to put the whole new drive shaft in, mainly cause I had to pull a few more things apart.. All done and tested it out today...