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Date:         07 Jan 97 07:19:53 PST
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         CARVER_JEFFREY@aphub.aerojetpd.com (Jeff Carver)
Subject:      Re: CV joint lifespan?

> 1. How long would you expect a CV joint (inner) to last?

I just recently took apart and salvaged for re-use the CV's from (2) '80 Westi's. Both vehicles have about 200K on them. Here's the results:

(7) were the original CV's from late '79 (found date stamp on them) (4) of those had been flopped from side to side to even out wear, so were finally kaput, and no longer useable.

(3) had been repacked somewhere in about 1985 as part of the extended warrantee I got when I purchased the bus. I knew the CV's needed to be "fixed" and getting assurances that they would be covered was why I got the extended warrantee (less $ than CV's)

I thought they would replace them, but being igorant, I didn't insist on that, they repacked, I find out 11 years later.

(1) had been replaced with a Lobro

I took the (3) best ones and the Lobro and flopped them, greased 'em, and they make horrible noises in reverse, but hoping to postpone the inevitable replacement until money is gathered.

BTW - threads in past have asked about rebuilding CV's. After examining the bits and pieces of a CV here's my take on this.

My job is a Manufacturing Engineer and puts me in a position of evaluating part designs and assisting the designers in getting a part designed to be manufactured economically and then support the shop to see that they ARE manufactured properly.

The inner and outer races for the CV's are basically fairly easy parts to manufacture. With dedicated machines, the factory can pop those things out fairly cheap. There's probably more money spent by them in assembly than in fabrication. Even aftermarket fabricators can build these parts relatively inexpensively with standard equipment (expensive equipment tho). Rebuilding requires more labor than building new, thus more $. They rebuild brake masters cause there are lots of them, and it's a simple task to bore the master out to a specific diameter and install stuff that matches that diameter.

Welding is labor intensive, machining after welding is part specific and not well suited to high volume production (low $).

- Jeff (2) '80 Westi's


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