Date:         Sun, 10 Jul 1994 10:43:04 -0400
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         steve@molly.tn.cornell.edu (S.Smith)
Subject:      thread on CVs


Here's my bit on CVs

On all the busses i have owned (70,71,72, and 83 V) I have dutifully
ignored CV maintenance until the dreaded knocking has come, save for
inspecting the boots every time i rolled under. When i did find a cracked 
boot i immedaitely dealt with it; either a new one or wrapping in plastic
and duct tape until the warm weather came and i could work outside again.

The right way to handle these, no doubt, is to 
clean and pack them once a year or 15,000 miles - i salute those of you
who can keep up with this ...... i sure cant.

Just to repost my drivel on this - when my 83 V starting knocking bigtime
i was commuting from Ithaca NY to Buffalo (126 miles) and drove them 
knocking for a month before i could get a chance to deal with them. 
One of the six balls/races had metal gouged out of it - with a good 
cleaning and repacking , however they have been quiet for the better
part of two years and 25,000.

Cant recommend shortcuts about getting those cap screws out - i have seen
a lot of posts about cramming the six point into the 12 point hole -

imho this is an economy undeserving of sympathy if you f* things up -
KD Tools sells the right size 12 pt. tool by itself for under $10
so go out and get it already.  

>From the Recycled Inc catalog - take a paper clip and clean out the
holes in the cap screw before you take the appropriate tool to them

the deeper you can get he tool into the cap screw the less likely
you will bugger it up.  Especially important on the Vanagon wheel
side as the CVs are recessed into the bearing housing so you dont
have room to tackle a stripped head like you do on the busses.
Replace any marginal screws while you are at it.

About keeping balls/races matched - being fairly AR i tried to do this
with a punchmark on the body of the CV and keeping the balls in a marked
egg carton.  Of course the cat knocked it over scrambling them up.

I only take one joint apart at a time because i dont think mixing
between joint is a very good thing to do. Operationally, I dont
take the joint of the shaft to clean, you can get all the balls out of the
races then dunk the whole thing in a a coffee can (3 lb size) full
of solvent and clean everything with a toothbrush until it shines.

taking the joints of the shaft is easy if you have press and 
a lot more work if you dont.

i thought about swapping shafts end-for-end and didnt go for it -it
makes sense to me as you would have new load surfaces- although you
probably just swap drive and coast load surfaces. If my joints were 
load on coast and quiet on drive (never happened to me) i wouldnt 
swap.

The major thing to take home from my babble is not to freak at some
pitting or funky looking balls (rude)  as bentley does - once the joints
start making noise I have always found evidence ofmechanical trauma,
but on every occasion the repacking job has fixed it (ie made it
quiet for years/ >20K)