FWD Axle not fully engaged, jumped out.

E36 M3, balls, berkeley, wank. I just finished putting the Volvo back together last night after a full service (timing belt, water pump, idlers, belts, tensioners, plugs, CV joint rebuild etc. etc.) so I it out for a spin to check it out before parking the Porsche for the winter and driving it to work today. No prob, fired right up, spent 15 mins idling, topping up the coolant waiting repeat (remember I replaced the water pump while in there). Set off. Feels nice to drive it again. Got to a stop sign about 1/2 mile away from home. Go for a 'quick' pull away and Pop, grind, grind grind. Bugger, Immediately know what's happened. One of the axles can't have been fully seated past the c clip and it's popped partly out so it's no longer engaged in the diff. It's not all the way out as fluid didn't piss out all over the place. No one was answering their phones at home so I walked home in the rain, got SWMBO, the Explorer and a tow rope then pulled it home. I'm busy every night this week and we're off to Chicago to see Hamilton this week so I won’t get a chance to work on it until next week. I hope it doesn't snow with the old tires I have on the Boxster.

So, without removing the whole corner, how can I re-seat the axle shaft? Will I be able to knock it into place somehow or am I going to have to remove the knuckle again and do it that way. I really hope there's some way of reseating it while still connected. Any ideas.

Pissed off as this have never happened before.

My .02, not a mechanic but I have done CV axles on other makes many times. I see no reason you couldn't remove the axle nut, reseat the splines in the diff and then drive the shaft back in with a BFH against the outer end of the axle shaft. Protect the threads on the end of the shaft so you can replace the axle nut (I've threaded the nut on backwards to give me a larger surface to strike). Haven't had any issues yet with Hondas, Toyotas and Nissans. YMMV. Maybe Knurled or one of the other techs on the forum could give a qualified opinion.

If you can find a spot to safely whack that end of it with a hammer (don't hit the boot or put force through the joint) then you should be able to seat it that way. If you can't, maybe pull the boot back until you can get a clean shot at something solid.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: If you can find a spot to safely whack that end of it with a hammer (don't hit the boot or put force through the joint) then you should be able to seat it that way. If you can't, maybe pull the boot back until you can get a clean shot at something solid.

This is the issue, I'll try. Getting on the end of the shaft is easy, but as you say that will put the full force through both inner and outer joints. I'll have to see what I can do next week.

When that happened to me (in a FWD Dodge Daytona, as I recall), the culprit turned out to be a collapsed motor mount. The whole engine/trans was sagging on the passenger side of the car, causing the axle to be not fully engaged into the trans. I destroyed a brand-new axle on a test drive after replacing it. Don't tell anyone, but I brought the axle back to the store, got a free replacement, then drove to another store to buy a motor mount.

In reply to jstein77:

I replaced the one dodgy engine mount. The rest are OK so it's not that.

thx though.

Skip the hammers. You'll wreck the joints before doing anything useful.

On the inner joint, there'll either be a lip or the outer edge of the cup for pushing. Use a projection on the engine or gearbox as the fulcrum for a second-class lever, and make sure you have a three to one or better mechanical advantage. Brace your feet against a strong point on the unibody. Shove the lever and seat the joint.

Whacking the wheel end while it's still in the hub probably won't work. The joints are made to slide in and out like slip yoke, so it will be like trying to push a rope. It may slide far enough to work but I doubt it. Was the axle not fully seated to begin with, or did it pop out for an unknown reason?

gearheadmb wrote: Whacking the wheel end while it's still in the hub probably won't work. The joints are made to slide in and out like slip yoke, so it will be like trying to push a rope. It may slide far enough to work but I doubt it. Was the axle not fully seated to begin with, or did it pop out for an unknown reason?

TBH I don't know right now. I thought I had it seated correctly, but I'm prefectly willing to belive I berkeleyed it up. In fact I want to have berkeleyed it up as if not there is some other underlying reason that it's jumped out.

I never set out to touch the axles, but when I went to swap the timing belt etc. I went in through the wheel arch and found out that one for the CV boots had split and puked all the grease out. Checking the other side it was the same issue. So while doing the rest of the work I removed them and had them rebuilt, only $60 a side to have mine rebuilt so not worth doing myself and they are my parts back, not some dodgy exchange unit. SO nothing was wrong before I removed them. the car 'only' has 108K miles on the clock, all with me, and nothing appeared to be wrong before I removed them. Based on that I assume I just hadn't seated one of them correctly even though it all felt to go back together OK.

chaparral wrote: Skip the hammers. You'll wreck the joints before doing anything useful. On the inner joint, there'll either be a lip or the outer edge of the cup for pushing. Use a projection on the engine or gearbox as the fulcrum for a second-class lever, and make sure you have a three to one or better mechanical advantage. Brace your feet against a strong point on the unibody. Shove the lever and seat the joint.

Never worried about shock loads on the joint before, learn something new here every day. So from the picture you would brace a lever against the engine or gearbox and shove the outer edge of the inner joint cup. Makes sense, thats another reason why I love this forum.

You can probably pop it back in by taking the nut off at the hub, but its usually easier to pop the ball joint and hold the strut out of the way, so you can get a straight shot at it. Use the main portion of the axle shaft as a slide hammer. It might behoove you to pop the axle out to make sure the splines aren't folded up at all. A couple of minutes with a small file might make your life better, or it might be no problem at all.

Other thing to check is whether the shaft came out of the joint that has the new boot on it. That happens too. That will generally show up as a twisted or torn boot.

So, I got home last night earlier than I thought and jacked the car up.

what I didn't mention yesterday was that I assumed it was the left hand shorter axle that had not seated as that's the one that gave me trouble going in. So I check that side first. No problem. Puzzled. Then I look accross the car and see something odd. That side slid in like butter. Go round the other side and pull the wheel. WTF. Houston we have found our problem. Well now I don't feel so bad. It looks like both sides seated correctly after all. Removed the offending article and I'm taking it back to where I got it rebuilt. I think the technical description is that berkeleying berkeleyer is berkeleying berkeleyed.

Are these pics working for others? They are for me but I have had issues since our Google overlords killed off Picasa and transitioned everything to google photos.

I'm so sorry, Adrian- I'm sitting here at my desk and laughing. The sad kind of laughing when you see a failure that is totally different than the one expected....

I'm trying to remember the last time I saw a CV joint come apart like that.

Seriously funny, in a schadenfreude way.

alfadriver wrote: I'm so sorry, Adrian- I'm sitting here at my desk and laughing. The sad kind of laughing when you see a failure that is totally different than the one expected.... I'm trying to remember the last time I saw a CV joint come apart like that. Seriously funny, in a schadenfreude way.

I appreciate the honest support

So the shaft pulled out of the CV joint? Does it look like it ever had a snap ring on it?

Pretty sure a BFH isn't going to help with that.

In reply to ¯_(ツ)_/¯:

I can't tell

No, that wasn't what I was expecting to see either.

Either you got the wrong (too-short) driveshaft or that outer joint was made of sawdust and Elmer's glue.

Take it back. Either the part number was wrong or there was a severe manufacturing defect.

chaparral wrote: No, that wasn't what I was expecting to see either. Either you got the wrong (too-short) driveshaft or that outer joint was made of sawdust and Elmer's glue. Take it back. Either the part number was wrong or there was a severe manufacturing defect.

No way it's the wrong side. this side is a two piece shaft. The inner is an intermediate shaft with a fixed carrier bearing. the outer is the same (similar?) length to the left hand side to help even up torque and reduce torque steer.

The thing is these are my shafts rebuilt, not exchange. No one had manual trans shafts in stock, one side is the same ans the auto and the other is different. So these are meant to be my own shafts back rebuilt.

Yes, so that leaves the other conclusion - extremely poor parts. Wrong size/specification for the race or balls, missing retaining feature for the inner race...

The guy didn't make sure the joint was engaged all the way onto the spline. Volvos often take a certain amount of beating to re-engage. Chances are, if it still has all 6 balls in the joint, that it will go back together just fine. Might need a bit of filing to take the burrs off the splines is all.

I probably shouldn't say "I told you so", because that would make me seem like a douche, right?

Life is good again. I dropped the axle off on Wed's where I had it rebuilt. They were very apologetic and offered to rebuild it while i waited but I didn't have time. Instead I picked it up again on my way home last night. It went back together really easily, almost like I'd had the experience of doing it before. Took it out, all is good so I drove it to work today. Boxster is now in the garage for the winter.

Streetwiseguy wrote: I probably shouldn't say "I told you so", because that would make me seem like a douche, right?

No more than usual All is good and yes you called it.

Berkeley, berkeley, berkeleyety, berkeley. Berkeley, berkeley berkeley.

I am displeased.

As I said last week I put it back together and drove it to work Friday. Since then it's got approx 100 miles total on it as we went to Chicago over the weekend in my company car. I drove it Monday and my wife had it Tuesday. She calls me around noon. It's dead and stranded her at a client's house. Balls, the Explorer is still at the service bay so I can't even go and get her so she calls a friend. We go and retrieve it last night and tow it home. I was already pissed as I assumed the left had now had the same failure as the right did last week. No, I'm even more pissed. The same joint (out CV of RH axle) has failed again. Balls.

Now. I don't see I can have done anything wrong. These axles had performed fine for the last 106K miles, I only took them off because of split boots. Do I get them to rebuild it for me again or do I find another axle?