Kirath ¾-B0§t0n

Well... Where to begin.

Last Sunday (after the AFC game go Pats) a friend of mine and myself swapped out the passenger side axle on my girls Audi 200.

It was a bit of a pain because of some stoopid metric bolts on the axle that were stripped. But some vice grips and a couple profanities later I got it off.

So that was good, axle replaced, CV joint fixed. I did notice on the drivers side that the CV boot was corrupt, but still intact. A quick test drive showed though there there was clicking on the drivers side and a very unpleasant jerking of the wheel. Well it had been like that for awhile and I did not have a drivers side axle to swap out.

So, we decided to drive home. About half way home after a sweeping on ramp, the wheel would not stop shaking. So I pulled over (mind you this is 9:30pm on the highway) and turned the wheel all the way left and right, shut the car off, and then started her back up. Waiting for traffic and went to pull out. That's when I heard the entire drivers side CV joint snap and all the bearings come flying out.

So I had to call my friend to come down and meet us on the highway, use his AA A to come tow the car back to his place. AAA of course took about 2 hours to get there, that was a lot of fun.

Well, yesterday I went to replace the other axle/CV joint. Thinking that we did the other side without too much trouble save a couple stripped bolts (so I had spares on hand), we did not anticipate too much trouble. That's till we took the wheel off.

This is what we found..

<img src="http://music.doodmonkeyradio.com/albums/album01/axlenut.sized.jpg">

<img src="http://music.doodmonkeyradio.com/albums/album01/axlenut2.sized.jpg">

AS you can see the axle nut is completly rusted into the axle, no freakin way to get it off even with a 600 pound impact wrench. We attempted to cold chisel it out, but that was a fruitless endevor. The only thing I think I can do is cut it with a torch, or get an entire new wheel bearing housing. The housing is huge, it braces the shock, it holds the wheel bearing, and I know it's gonna be hard or pricey to get a hold of.

Here is the busted CV joint - I'll get better pics once I get it out of there.
<img src="http://music.doodmonkeyradio.com/albums/album01/axle.sized.jpg">

So I'm screwed. No idea what I'm gonna do. Don't know if a junk yard will be able to identify what I need or if I should go to someone else to find it. I might just end up junking this car. []

Adam Mowafy

Ive had luck with taking the air chisel to these type of situations.

dwengi

If you can manage to cut the nut off without damaging the wheel hub you should be in good shape. You will destroy the axle but your axle looks pretty evil so you may as well just replace the entire assembly. Once the nut is gone just press the axle out as normal. I would replace the wheel bearing while you are in there. BTW the factory tells you to drop the strut tower to replace wheel bearing and unless you have some special tools this is recommended - otherwise it is likely you will damage the bearing when reinstalling the wheel hub.

I feel bad for you guys in the rust belt...

TonyOldSchool

stone and grind the nut off. I did this on inner races of ball bearings "welded" on pump shafts. Grind as much as you can on one section. Keep grinding till you get close to the threads. The air chisel along with a WD40 like pennetrating oil should pop loose. Use the chisel to push around the nut. If it won't move then grind the other side (180 apart). When ( I say it because you will!) you do get it off, clean the threads and maybe get a Die to clean up the threads. Thread and re-thread a number of times to make sure the new nut will not sieze again. Use grease or an anti-sieze compound and torque as per spec. You already did one side so you'd hate to waste all that time and junk the car now. I give you credit, for doing the CV job. IS that car rusted as bad as your pictures show? It appears it was in a flood or something. Hows the brakes, are they rusted? Check also under the carpet etc. Someone gave me a 90 Jeep and end up junking it. Even the springs on the drum brakes rusted so bad that they broke.

Kirath ¾-B0§t0n

No idea why this side was rusted so bad.. Freakin sucks.

I'm going to get an oxyacetylene torch hopefully and just cut the damn thing out.

Kirath ¾-B0§t0n

the shock from the top. There is this Threaded cap &lt;133 ft lb&gt; that looks like it holds the strut and the shock assembly together.

Looks like it needs a special tool to remove -&gt; tool 2069.

Any clues on disasembling this? Can it be done? do I need this freakin 2069 tool?

moving violation

The impact gun is definately the way to go. No special tools needed. You can cut a slot into a socket also. Do a search on that tool # and you should find lots of info. If you can find a good used strut tower, thats the direction I'd go. Chris at force 5 maybe?

moving violation

gaining access from the outside through the springs with a pipe wrench. If I had the tool, I'd use it, but I thought that the pipe wrench aproach was easy enough. I also found that raising up the opposite side of the car lined things up in the strut tower better. You can do it without the tool.

CARSNPLANES

Seems you were running with that bad CV joint for a long time. I bet your bearing is toast too. What usually happens is that the extreme heating up caused by the wear and friction from a working joint, then cooling down, then heating...Condensation forms continuesly and forms rust. So when you see rust on something that usually shouldn't have it, suspect a problem, something working, loose or worn etc. Bet if you had felt the wheel after each drive with the worn joint working, you would have felt it hotter than the other side. It bakes the rubber boot too.