Sorry John, you must swap axles side to side on the vehicle, swapping ends on the same side does nothing. This is long established list knowledge. It used to come up regularly but it has been quite a while now. The mistake in your discussion is that there are no rotating bearings inside the CV, at least in the sense you mean. The large balls ride in grooves that are sideways. When the CV axle is under tension from the tranny output flanges the balls are forced against one side of the grooves. The lateral grooves are there so that when the suspension allows the wheel to go up and down the inner and outer CV joint can then change angles with respect to each other. There is a groove in the inner part for each groove in the outer part and a single large ball rides in each pair of grooves. The large balls do not turn in the grooves just because the vehicle is moving. They primarily move in the groove when the wheel goes up and down. The direction of rotation of the whole joint is not the wear issue. The wear is caused by the twisting force on the joint forcing the balls to ride on the same side of the groove whenever the vehicle is moving forward under engine power. Mark John Rodgers wrote: > Al Brase and Dennis Haynes have been kind enough to express differing > opinions on this so in response here is further explanation from my > point of view for benefit of The List Membership. > > My perception of this is that we are talking principally about the goal > of changing the direction of rotation of the bearing and axle when we > speak of swapping them to opposite sides of the vehicle. This is to take > advantage of changing the wear pattern on the bearings to extend the > life of the bearings. > > It is an easy thing to swap them to opposite sides of the vehicle - and > miss changing the direction of rotation!! > This is why I suggest keeping the shafts on the same side of the vehicle > as it is easy to induce confusion. ................................ |
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