qezel

a few weeks ago, my newly acquired and long neglected (by PO's) b5 dropped its lower/rear control arm from the left front corner. the ball joint just completely seperated, luckily just as I was coming to the stop sign by my parking lot so I was able to limp into my spot and park her for a couple weeks. I ordered a control arm kit, replaced the bad arm in the lot and then drove an hour home from school to do the whole job. The control arm part of the everything wasn't all that bad.. one stubborn pinch bolt, but nothing some PB, a torch, a BFH, and some patience didn't take care of. The problem arose when I went to do my CV joint boots. One was starting to crack, but was still quite greased and making no noise and the other was fine.. figured I'd do both "while I was in there" (famous last words). All went fine on the joint that actually needed the boot. The other side was really fine, but again.. why the hell not, i've got the whole thing apart, may as well do it. Should have just let it be.

I spent hours trying to get the joint off, and after many posts here and many, many searches through the archives, I couldn't find anything. After what was probably 6 hours, I decided I'd had enough and got out my trusty angle grinder and figured I had nothing to lose. I put the joint at its maximum angle so I could get to the bearing cage and cut it all apart so I could pop the ball bearings out and get the cup/stub/whatever you call it off the axle. Once I did this, I was able to get a 3 arm gear puller on inner part of the joint. Still would not come off.. even with a 5 foot pole over a 1/2" breaker bar on a diesel puller. I ended up having to take a screwdriver and compress the circlip as I was cranking the puller down and it FINALLY came off. What had happened was some previous HACK of a mechanic had probably lost the real circlip and made one. Looks like they found a round ring somewhere, and cut a piece out of it to make their own c-clip. Two problems with that idea. 1) its the wrong shape and blocks too much of the splines. 2) it seemed like the metal was much harder than the real circlip. Drives me crazy when people don't think about these things when they "fix things".

The best part of this whole deal is how I got it all back together. I was left with a completely destroyed CV joint and an axle that lacked a CV and I needed to get back to school that night. Having a stash of of old b2/b3 parts in just about every room of the house I got to digging. 90q20v's have a beefier CV and none of those parts would work. However, 4000/CGT joints are the same size, well kinda. The bearing cage from a 4000 CV works perfectly in the A4 cup, but the bearings are too big (for any b2 guys out there, the 4k has bigger ***** :-P). So my outer cv ended up being: A4 cup/stub, 4000 bearing cage, 4000 inner splined thing, and A4 bearings. Worked perfectly.

Now I get the whole thing back together and realize that after all the pounding, the inner joint is now kaput. Took it all apart to try and reset all the ball bearings, but something must have gotten scored badly because it was not having it. Considering both 90's and A4's run essentially the same 01A, i went back to one of the 90q20v axles I had, and sure enough the inner joint from the 90 worked.

Long story short.. due to a terrible mechanic, a stubborn CV was the hardest part of my first control arm experience and forced me to create the ultimate franken-axle comprised of:
-A4 shaft
-90q20v inner joint
-Outer joint made up of:
-A4 ball bearings
-A4 cup/stub
-4000 bearing cage
-4000 inner splined portion

So far all is well.. one of the joints clicks a little at completely fully lock, but that's probably because even though I re-greased everything, everything I used was quite old.. I'll be putting in a new axle ASAP.. but in a pinch, this setup works, so I figured I'd do a writeup on the whole thing.

qfrog Ti20

dude... thats a frankenaxle if ever there was. You do know that 2nd hand axles are stupid cheap like $20-$40/ea. Oh and fixing ****ty work always sucks a big one.

qezel

i started messing with the axle on sunday so any yards were closed and I didn't have time to try and find someone with a spare. I got real lucky that we got nailed with snow and I was banking on the fact that class would be canceled monday, which it thankfully was. if I could have, I most defintely would have just gotten a used one. Now i'll probably just use this creature until I can get a new one.

Jretal

They don't make 'em like they used to :-P

Nice job! I have a lot of patience, but you take the cake on this one. I probably would have thrown the axle into a fire and dumped gas on it and watched it burn at any point during that encounter!

qezel

but for the guinness to keep me from insanity, it would have seen its demise. however, once i get a replacement, this thing will suffer.