Date:         Fri, 08 Jul 94 08:49:46 CDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Joel Walker <JWALKER@ua1vm.ua.edu>
Subject:      Re: cv-joints: Constant Velocity Marihuana?

On Fri, 8 Jul 94 05:36:18 CDT William Warburton said:
> This I'm not convinced about- given that the drive plates at the
>transmission end are constrained (by the torsion bar suspension) to
>remain essentially parallel to the ones at the wheel end, it seems to
>me that the angle subtended by the driveshaft must be identical at each
>CV. I agree that the wheel must effectively do most of the moving but
>in practice the geometry dictates that the angles that the CVs take on
>must be the same.
> Intuitively the wheel does the moving, in practice the joints experience
>identical motion.
> I may be wrong but if so then I would appreciate an explanation of why :-).

hmmmmm. the man has a point. :(  i guess it is true that while the transmisison
end OUTER shell doesn't move much, the inner shell has to move with the axle
and so, must match angle for angle with the wheel end (of the axle).

rats. if it's too good to be true, it must be. but it sure SEEMS like that
wheel-end joint, moving up and down as much as the wheel does, OUGHT to be
doing something MORE than the wall-flower-transmission-end.  i wish i had
paid more attention to which end had more burnt spots. well, i can always
check the current set when i do them in a little while. i'm gonna still try
(if they are not toooo burnt) to swap ends and see how far i can go.

i do remember reading something about vw changing the transmission for the
water-cooled vanagons, and part of that change was to relocate the cv-joint
so that there was a zero-degree angle front-to-back-of-the-car between the
two joints on each axle. it seems that on all the older buses, there had
been a small angle there, in addition to the large angle of up-to-down from
transmission to wheel ends.  but, again, the angle does have to be the same
at each end IF the joints are parallel. aha! but what if they are NOT parallel?
hmmmmm. nah.

ok. so what have we got?
1. joints need grease.
2. more grease is better than less grease.
3. grease dries out. needs cleaning off and replacing.
4. joint boots dry out and crack and get cut. need replacing eventually.
5. flipping/reversing should extend the life of the joint for a while longer.
6. bolts can be a bitch to get out. best to have lots of options.
7. star-bolts is better bolts if you can get them.
8. re-check the bolts after a while. they might loosen up.

did i miss anything?
joel