my winter break project turned into my whole winter project and I cannot get my rear driveshaft off the tranny. I'm in the process of a k04 upgrade and i'm removing the engine and tranny and I believe this is all that's left but it won't come off. I've unscrewed both ends of the driveshaft and neither will come off, they seem rusted. This is on a 2000 a6 2.7.

I only have time to mess with it on weekends and have been hosing it with pbblaster and wd-40 with no luck. any help would be great. Can i just remove the ujoint? and is there a special tool for it? any other ideas?

 

Have you removed the bolts holding the center bearing? Once that drops, the prop shaft should follow.

If it doesn't, go ahead and hook the engine and tranny up to your cherry picker and pull it. I bet the pro shaft will drop out from the moving around.

Bob

 

the center driveshaft support is removed. I have the cherrypicker hooked up and everything to it and tried to pull it off with no luck. I even hooked up a handwinch and tried to use it to pull it out. Am I missing something?

 

Go to www.vagcat.com and look at their catalog for the "rear axle" and then "propeller shaft". Once the allen bolts are removed, which hold the propeller shaft cv joint to the transmission rear flange there is a gasket which may be causing your problem. You will need to replace this gasket, new cv joint grease to the flange and new self locking allen bolts, so you need to buy them. This gasket may be broken loose by very carefully applying force to the side of the cv joint with a tool hit by a large hammer. Be very carefull to not damage the cv joint boot sheetmetal flange or the transmission rear flange, so avoid direct hammer blows. You may have to rotate the propeller shaft several times and repeat this to break the gasket loose. You should also mark the possition of the cv joint to the rear transsmission flange and propeller shaft with white paint, so you won't have propeller shaft balancing problems. Also, while you have the propeller shaft off, it is a good time to replace the seal at the rear transmission flange.

 

Wow didn't know they had a site like that. I usually use etka for information like that. I'm going to try to use something like a 2x4 and a smaller sledge hammer and just pound it. I'm just afraid of it falling off the jackstands and can't get under it with the car lowered, Guess i'll figure something out. Thanks for the tips

 

That vagcat site is for the European Audi, so the engines are different than for USA/Canada.
You don't need a sledge hammer, as a standard nailing hammer worked. It would be a good idea to have one of the allen bolts loosely holding the propeller shaft, so it won't drop when the gasket breaks loose. Any tool such as an old screw driver may be used with the hammer to break the gasket loose from the transmission flange and CV joint. I had to hit the side of the CV joint and then turn the propeller shaft several times before the gasket broke loose. I had the car on jackstands, so I could get to the propeller shaft. The jackstands need to be on a paved level surface, such as concrete. Put a platic bag over the CV joint to keep dirt out of the grease after it is off the flange.