CV Joints Comparison

[Wildthings]

[Sodo]

[Syncro Jael]

It is very interesting to open up a new box of CV joints and try and plunge them. Very difficult to say the least.

All of that friction has to increase heat until the ball grooves break in. I am really wondering how much lubrication can really take place when they are so tight?

I have read on other forums about a break in period for CV joints. Much like breaking in a new Ring & Pinion. Short drives with no full torque applied, then a complete cool down period. A few break in sequences and you are good to hammer down.

A new CV joint is quite a rigid assembly, making it difficult to rotate the internals by hand. If you did manage to rotate the innards of a new joint to the point where the balls could be pulled out, you’d have a hell of a job reassembling it all.

Race CVs are fine tuned by lightening the exterior of the housing, and polishing and relieving the internals. The housing is made from alloy steel, but only the inner tracks are induction heat-treated. This means narrow grooves can quite easily be machined away to reduce the rotating mass and unsprung weight. The depth of the case hardening of the tracks is in the vicinity of 1.2mm to 2.5mm, so some grinding to a depth of 0.25mm by specialist CV reconditioners (to accept 0.50mm oversize balls) is possible, and light honing by racers is perfectly acceptable.

Just from my personal experience knocking off the high spots and having the joint plunge freely has worked for my application. I agree if you do break in the joints then tear them down, clean, and use new grease. You are letting the van prep the joint for use.

I just can't seem to put joints on the van that cannot plunge!
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1987 Syncro Westfalia Hightop - NAHT
Subaru EJ25 Forged Frankenmotor, Triple Knob.
Jael = (Mountain Goat)

[dobryan]

Ron, This is the Vanagon forum, all conversations about joints belong in the splittie forum....
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Dave O
'87 Westy w/ 2002 Subaru EJ25 and Peloquin TBD

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." Robert Louis Stevenson

MD>Canada>AK>WA>OR>CA>AZ>UT>WY>SD
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=620646

Building a bus for travel in Europe (euroBus)
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=695371

The Western Syncro build
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=746794

[Syncro Jael]

[Wildthings]

It would be nice to have a machine that could repeated plunge new joints while the load on the joint was slowly increase so that the entire wear face of the joint could be work hardened.

[Fiorenzo]

If I will be in the mood, I think i will polish only two of the CV joints and leave the other 2 as sold. After some thousands km I will check them and make some photos for you. The only problem here is that my camper is completely disassembled now due to a complete restoration I am doing.



Its a collage of stitched photos so the shape is deformed and also still lacks all the graphics

[Jeffrey Lee]

[Fiorenzo]

[dobryan]

[bettingonvans]

I have a set of GKNs sitting on my desk ready to install. Best I can tell my CV joints and boots are original and looking pretty okay for 140k miles (on the outside). Having read plenty of accounts here of CV failures with very few miles, I opened these new joints and found races looking like Mark's photo and I was disappointed. I'm ready to be wrong about this, but I work with all kinds of bearings for a living and wouldn't expect good life out of anything with such coarse races. I have a 15k miles trip coming up this summer and can't decide if the riskier move is to preventatively install these new joints or leave my current CVs in place and not touch a thing. I have no symptoms right now.

I read your thread last week Syncro Jael. I am not surprised your joints are performing well. If I do install these joints before this summer I think I will follow your footsteps.

Does anyone get long CV joint life without similar preparation using hardware with such a coarse race finish? I would expect them to begin pitting, but I guess maybe they could just yield locally and then polish up, work harden maybe.

[dobryan]

bettingonvans, if I had a set of original CV's that were quiet with no pitting I would not hesitate to clean them install new grease and run them again vs installing brand new CV's. (I would also take along a spare CV or two, and grease,... but I do that anyway).
_________________
Dave O
'87 Westy w/ 2002 Subaru EJ25 and Peloquin TBD

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." Robert Louis Stevenson

MD>Canada>AK>WA>OR>CA>AZ>UT>WY>SD
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=620646

Building a bus for travel in Europe (euroBus)
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=695371

The Western Syncro build
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=746794

[Aryana]

https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/2014/01/14/the-waddington-effect/

[bettingonvans]

I get what you mean, Aryana. I bought the new joints because I have to be able to drive on my axles at the end of the day every time I work on my van. If I don't have new joints when I tear my old ones down, I am stuck and have to repack and run the worn ones until the new ones arrive, then repeat labor. Something needs to be done to them, I don't know the history and it all looks original. How many vans are running 150k mile CV joints with original grease and boots?

[Aryana]

I’m at 206k miles with original joints and boots. No tears in the boots and I haven’t removed them for inspection, but I routinely take many 1000 mile round trips at 80 mph with no issues from the CVs (or anything else).

I have had a oil weeping issue from my main seal, but that is more of an annoyance than a major mechanical problem. I’ll drop the transmission soon and replace it. I also had a small coolant weep leak from one of my head gaskets but the Subaru stop leak solved it until I decide to reseal the heads in the future. In the meantime I sill cruise at 4500+ rpm for hours on end.

My WBX is pretty darn reliable. I carry some spares (belts, hoses) just in case, but you know how that goes...whatever you’re carrying you’ll never actually need.

As that article outlines, maintenance is like surgery, not excercise. The benefits should outweigh the risks.

Or in laymen’s terms, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

I’ve read a few threads of ground up rebuilds of an entire Vanagon that had poor reliability. Sometimes you can cause more problems than you solve.

OTOH, many of these old vans have sat and are not proven to survive a long trip far from home. This is tricky because these vans are 30+ years old and many components are near the end of their service life based on time alone.

My van has been continuously driving since it was new in 1986. That helps a lot. Although many components are old, they are still working very well.

I have an old airplane (70 years old) and it’s the most reliable vehicle I own. Every year we carefully decide what items are restored/repaired/replaced and then go through a period with high probability of failure until the restoration/repair/replacement is proven. A similar thing can be done with your van when you replace critical components.

[Wildthings]

[Fiorenzo]

Hi guys I have some news I think are interesting.
After reading articles about CV prep i thought It was something I had to do to the cheap cv i bought.

Initially i have't thought the cv as they are, the CV are bearings that let the shaft pivot around its axle.
All the bearings I have worked with have the balls free to move in the internal cage.

What is happening here with these cvs is that the balls are quite stuck to move inside the holes of the cage, both the original lobo i have and expecially the cinese german Ridex crap I bought.
I have observed that if the balls doesn't freely rotate and doesn't freely slide inside the "oval" holes of the cage, for sure, pitting and destructive overheating will happen due to the balls working in fixed position.
Infact I have found that about the 60% of the lobo balls where severely overheated and some rings grooves pitted.

So what I did was free the balls in the cages of one cv with some grinding and polishing until the balls could slide and rotate freely. Before, the only movement that they could do easily was rotate in the horizontal direction buy they couldn't slide or rotate in other directions.

I think: because the Cvs are like bearings them must have some little play around the balls because these will heat when rotating at high speed and, if without play, the balls will get even more stuck if they don't start with some.

I have also polished all the ring groves.

The difference was huge, from day to night. Now the internal ring move so freely. The cv can dismantle itself if you don't maintain it in position, it has not visible rotational play and it moves very smoothly and completely free like oil and like it should be from what i think.

Watch this video I did:


Link

[Syncro Jael]

[Merian]

millions and millions of vehicles are on the road using CV joints with very rare failures

Why are the Vanagon joints such a POS ??
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[Aryana]

I’d say only the Vanagon replacement joints are a POS.

My OE ones are doing great after 32 years and 206k miles.