Drive axles assembly remove and replace

You are over-thinking this issue. It is customary to mark rear-wheel drive shafts in case it was balanced dynamically with the yoke it is bolted to, but front-wheel-drive half shafts rotate at about one third the speed of a drive shaft, and due to their small diameter, balancing is not needed. For that reason, there is no indexing spline on the inner CV joint. Most inner CV joints will slide out of the transmission quite easily with just a little tug on the shaft. If you have to pull really hard, there is a chance the inner joint will come apart. The rollers can be held in with a very large snap ring, or wire, a thick metal band with fingers that are bent over, a plastic ring that is snapped on, or nothing at all. If you pull the joint apart, you might have to slide the rubber boot out of the way to put it back together. On some designs the three rollers are held on with snap rings. On some designs, nothing but the outer housing holds the rollers in place. If you pull that type apart, you will have needle bearings all over the place. You can tell when you pull on the shaft. If there is some means of holding the joint together, you will feel the "bump" when the shaft is pulled out as far as possible. If you do not feel that bump, use a pry bar to pry the inner joint from the transmission. The housing might come out as the boot stretches, then pulls on it, but that is not a chance worth taking.

Removing half shafts is a basic job of disassembly and reassembly, but there are two little-known things you should be aware of. The first is since you will need to disconnect the lower ball joint from the spindle, it is common to find the ball joint is sloppy and in need of being replaced. Most late-model designs incorporate the ball joint as part of the lower control arm which is attached with two pivot bolts. Removal is straight forward and easy, but when it comes to putting it back together, most do-it-yourselfers and inexperienced mechanics bolt it tight, then swing it up to connect the stud to the spindle. The bushings were tightened when the arm was hanging down. Once the car is lowered onto the tires and the arm swings up to its normal at-rest position, those bushings will be clamped in a permanent twist. That will greatly reduce their life. Instead, proper procedure is to assemble everything while leaving the pivot bolts loose. All of my former coworkers left them loose while they drove the vehicle over to my hoist where I did the alignments, then I tightened them while the vehicle was sitting on my drive-on hoist. When you are not replacing parts that will change the alignment, you will need to bounce the vehicle when it is at normal ride height, then crawl underneath to tighten the pivot bolts.

The second concern is the wheel bearings are held together by the outer CV joint and axle nut. The torque value for that nut is critical and is uncommonly-high on many GM vehicles. The lowest I have ever seen is 180 foot pounds. Some GM vehicles call for as much as 240 foot pounds. It is absolutely necessary that no vehicle weight ever be on the bearing if the axle nut is not torqued to specs. Doing so will instantly make it noisy. Some people loosen the nut before jacking up the vehicle so the tire will hold the axle shaft from spinning. At that point it is too late. Some people finish the job by lowering the tire to the ground to hold the axle shaft while tightening the nut. Too late. I even got a GM car from the body shop to align after it was repaired for crash damage. To straighten it out, they had to remove the engine and transmission, then they found out it would take two weeks to get the parts from the dealer. To use the space in the shop, they pushed the car outside, about fifty feet, with almost no weight in the front. Later they pushed it back it to complete the work. Later, when I took it for a test-drive after the alignment, both front wheel bearings were noisy and had to be replaced. Even with almost no weight on the front, setting the car down on the wheel bearings with nothing to hold them together damaged them.

The simple solution to prevent this damage is to stick a punch or screwdriver into one of the cooling slots in the brake rotor to hold the axle shaft from turning when you loosen and tighten the axle nut. Be sure the nut is tightened to specs any time the vehicle's weight is on the bearing. This must be done with a click-type torque wrench.

There are no rear assemblies on this model. You only have two front half shafts, one on each side. Sorry if I confused the issue about the CV joints coming apart. What I meant to describe is the goal is to not allow the inner joint to separate inside the boot as that can require a lot of extra time to put it back together. Where people run into trouble is when they just tug relentlessly on the shaft when it refuses to come out of the transmission. Something is going to give, and that can be the inner joint if the housing is stuck in the transmission. All inner CV joints have a spring inside them that keeps the housing pushed into the transmission, but yours also has a cir-clip on the splined shaft to help hold it in. That is what can make the joint hard to remove. Tugging on the shaft while a helper pries on it can help.

I like to write long stories, but I doubt I can improve on the manufacturer's service manual. Paper manuals are my favorite, but I never use Haynes or Chiltons manuals. They do a very poor job with electrical diagrams which is one of my other specialty areas.

The procedure for removing the half shafts is no different than for any other front-wheel-drive car. You do have one advantage in the ball joint can be removed from the control arm as a second way to separate the parts. Remove the axle nut once the wheel is off. Use your thumb to push the stub shaft in toward the transmission. It should move with quite a bit of difficulty, then spring back when you let go of it. If it does not spring back, the internal spring is broken in the inner CV joint.

The normal way to remove the shaft is to remove the pinch bolt at the bottom of the spindle that holds the ball joint's stud in there. Use a long pry bar to push the control arm down until the stud pops out of the spindle. This is not a common tapered stud so you do not have to break that friction fit. Often a ridge of rust will form on the exposed part of the stud on top making removal difficult. A solution is to use a hammer and flat chisel to spread the gap in the spindle where the pinch bolt went through.

Your lower ball joint should be riveted to the lower control arm, but if it has been replaced already, the new one was bolted in. You can remove those two bolts to allow the parts to be separated instead of taking the stud out of the spindle. Be aware no two ball joints of this design are ever alike, so if it is replaced, or if it is removed with the two bolts, then reassembled, it is pretty likely it will not be holding the bottom of the spindle in the same orientation as it was before. To say that more plainly, the car will need to be aligned when you are done. If you pop the stud out of the spindle and do not need to replace that ball joint, it has choice but to go together the same way as it was before. The basic alignment angle in question is "camber", and it will not have changed. Camber is the inward or outward tilt of the wheel on top as viewed from in front of the car. It has the biggest influence on bad tire wear, and a tire wants to pull in the direction it is leaning. Camber has to be within specs for good tire wear, and it must be equal on both sides for the car to go straight.

Regardless how you separate the parts, now the strut/spindle/brakes can be pulled away from the car as you slide the outer CV joint out of the bearing. The assembly will want to turn because it is being tugged on by the steering linkage. That can make the joint easier to slide out of the bearing. If you cannot pull it far enough, you can aid the process by turning the steering wheel so the steering linkage on that wheel moves outward. That will allow you to pull the spindle out further and/or easier. This whole part of the job takes the better part of ten seconds. It takes longer to describe it than to do it.

On some models the room to move parts around is limited. If necessary, have a helper hold the spindle outward and to the front or rear as necessary to make room to pull on the half shaft. The straighter you can pull it out, the easier it will be to get it out. Do not be surprised if a quart of transmission fluid spills out. That can only be avoided if you are working on just one side and you jack the car up with that side higher than the other side.

When you start to put it back together, a lot of people get flustered when the inner joint will not slide into the transmission. Pounding on the outer joint will not help, although it might make you feel better! Just move the shaft up, down, and around until it is straight with the hole. On most cars the joint will suddenly slide right in when it lines up, but remember, you have the clip on the end. It is going into a hole that is tapered on the end to get that clip started. It has to compress as it goes in. Once in a while it can drop off-center enough that part of it catches outside of the taper and refuses to compress. Typically, working it back and forth is all that is needed, but I have heard of people putting a little axle grease on it to stop the clip from dropping too far out of "centered". The thing that has caused me the most trouble is when that clip is stretched too large in diameter, typically from me wrestling it off and back on. If that happens, remove it, squeeze it to a smaller diameter, but still nice and round, then carefully slide it back on into its groove.

Rotate the outer joint so it can be slid into the wheel bearing/hub assembly. Now comes the hardest part of the job. The control arm has to be pried down as the spindle is pushed toward the car, then the ball joint's stud has to go into the spindle as you let the control arm up. For most people that is a two-man job. I can get it done myself with my foot on the end of a five-foot-long pry bar, but it can be frustrating. Once you get the stud to the hole in the spindle, it will not go in until it is lined up perfectly straight. Do that by pushing on the brake rotor to push the spindle in, out, forward, or rearward, as necessary. When it is lined up, the stud will start to go in on its own on most cars. The rubber control arm bushings will cause the arm to want to spring up with sufficient pressure to get the stud started. Once you reach that point, you might have to help it go all the way in with hammer taps on the control arm. I prefer to try to push the pinch bolt in as I tap the stud up. When the bolt falls all the way in, you will know the stud is all the way in. I have seen at least two cases where the mechanic did not realize the stud was not fully seated. The pinch bolt went in over the stud without catching it in its groove. One of those came apart as the owner was going around a corner in town.

As a point of great interest, I just got a call three days ago from my friend, my instructor who I replaced when he retired. He was struggling with this very part of the job on his daughter's car, a GM front-wheel-drive product. All I did was push the spindle toward the rear of the car about a half inch more than he did, and the stud popped in. He thought I was a genius, and of course I was no about to argue with him. After all, I was his student in the late 1970's! He only has a drive-on hoist in his shop, and that makes this procedure a lot more difficult.

At this point, I prefer to install the axle nut right away and torque it to specs so I will not forget it later.

If you are going to replace the shafts out of principle, go with new ones instead of rebuilt. When I worked for a very nice family-owned Chrysler dealership in the 1990's, new shafts were only available from the manufacturer and were horribly expensive, as in around $450.00. They insisted we use them when doing warranty repairs. For out-of-warranty stuff, rebuilt shafts cost around $150.00 to $180.00. Today you can buy new shafts for lower cost than it takes to rebuild one. I bought a new shaft for my 1988 Grand Caravan for $65.00 a couple of years ago. There is nothing wrong with a rebuilt shaft except there is one potential problem that is usually missed. That is worn spots inside the inner joint's housing where the three rollers ride. That wear will cause a severe wobble in the steering wheel when under load, as in when accelerating out of a parking lot, and it can be much worse when the steering system is turned sharply one way. Those rollers need to roll back and forth with each wheel rotation, and as the suspension system goes up and down. Ride height and turning change where those rollers run in there grooves. When they need to run beyond the worn spots is when they bind under the torque of normal acceleration. You will not feel this when cruising or coasting. This problem is also affected by re-positioning the engine. There is always one engine mount that sets where the engine sits, from left to right. Moving an engine even an eighth inch can make this problem show up.

When you run into this, there is no way to know which inner joint is causing it. The joints have to be disassembled to inspect them. Wipe the grease out, then run your fingertip along the six highly-polished rolling surfaces. If you feel the slightest irregularity, you really have junk. I have only found one that was that bad. Next, clean the joint with Brake Parts Cleaner, and dry it, then shine a light in there and look at the reflection. This is similar to seeing a beautiful body job on a classic car at a car show, but then seeing ripples near the bottom of the sides where the grass reflects on them. If you see such a minor wave in the reflection in the housing, that is what causes the steering wheel wobble. This is extremely easy to miss even when you know what to look for and is why I am wary of rebuilt shafts. When I do replace both shafts with rebuilt units, I install just one first, then drive the vehicle to make sure it is okay. If it is, then I do the other one. If I had to do both at the same time, then find a wobble, I would have to guess which one or both shafts are responsible. You do not have to worry about that with new shafts.

As a point of interest, at least back in the 1990's, a new inner CV joint housing from any manufacturer cost way more than a rebuilt half shaft, plus the labor to transfer the rollers into it and install the grease and boot. It did not make economic sense to try to repair our customers' cars that way.

That is it. Keep the praise coming.

I only know three things, and you asked about one of them.

Please keep us updated on your progress.

Dandy story. Want to trade places?

As a point of interest, during my years as an instructor, one of my outside duties was to judge a skills contest in Madison, WI each April. Auto got combined with such things as brick layers, electricians, heavy truck mechanics, bakers, and a pile of other trades. My station was Engine Measurements. I had two blocks prepared and plenty of tools provided. Crankshaft end play, bearing clearance, and piston to cylinder wall clearance were a few of things the kids were required to measure. We had high school students in the morning. Few of them knew what to do. In the afternoon we had technical college kids. It was pretty evident who got the best training, as they breezed through the tasks very quickly.

Anyway, that is my story. Now I just sit and answer car questions and share my wondrous knowledge as necessary.