I am going to embark on replacing the front driver side outer CV joint in an 2002 Quattro A6 v6 3.0. Is there anything I should be weary of? I have the CD version of the repair manual and everything looks fairly straight forward, but I know how that goes. Any words of advice would be fantastic.
Thanks

 

Replacing the CV joint is a bit of work, a lot of guys just replace with a rebuilt axle, it's not much more $ than the joint and a lot quicker/easier.

 

lol risk the axle to not replace the cv boot???? How about you just run the car with zero cv boots when you replace the axle aswell... replace ASAP it is worth the work to not break your axle like my buddies STI :-X Snapped his axle

 

Well according to the parts website (which rocks by the way), they recommend to just replace the CV joint. Here is the link. (http://www.blauparts.com/audi/audi_a...oint_kit.shtml)

I am a noob, so I have no clue, and replacing the outer CV joint is the path I am on. I plan on working around needing the special pressing screw by using the hex screw in the kit since it is threaded all the way to the head. According to another site, this should work fine for pressing of the CV joint. Autozone rents tools and they have the CV clamp tool, so I picked that up. Other than that it doesn't look all that terrible. I will report back when I am done, but in the mean time is there any other advice, aside from doing other things besides replacing the CV joint [8D]

 

OK, here is the follow-up. I came on last night to surf any and all posts to help with the ol CV joint repair, but none were helpful. As I said I am a noob at the whole car repair thing, and after reading this it will surely show.

So, I started. First problem. The 27mm bolt in the CV repair kit is NOT the same as the one on the stock vehicle. The one on the vehicle is a 17mm hex-allen screw, which is not an easy thing to find (no parts store had a socket that big and I finally ended up at Sears). Great, got that and I am good to go, right?

Nope. Next, I get the car jacked up and am following the repair manual steps for removal of the axle from the front wheel housing. ABS speed sensor, no problem that pops off and I move onto the upper control arms. 16mm bolt. WTF? The socket set skips the 16mm. Grrrrr. Back to the store... Anyway, this bolt is a bolt from hell. I figure once the nut is off I should be able to just tap it out. Nope, tapping doesn't work and as it turns out tapping is REALLY bad. Don't do this. Apparently when the mechanic remarks "Don't work, get a bigger hammer" he is just kidding. So the bolt needs to be screwed out... I still have no idea why it is a bear, perhaps the expectation of 240kilometers per hour on the autobaun. Anyway, this bolt, this damn bolt obviously is very close to the ball joint on the upper control arms and rubs pretty substantially against it. After about 2 hours and ditching the wrench for an impact air socket gun the bolt comes out, and it is ruined.. Head all munched up, threads messed up.. Oh well, we will deal with that later. On to the "remove the control arms from the wheel bearing housing". Yes, that is what the manual says.

There is no way these ball joints are coming out unscathed. My noob-ness just assumed that the instructions were simple so that actual task would be simple and a quick tug would free the ball joint from is captive housing. Nope, so apparently I need a ball joint separator tool... Back to the store... OK, a grilling fork with tappered points, um, OK. So I start trying to pry these things out... After playing with this thing for 10 minutes I quickly realize the water is swiftly flooding around me and it is soon going to be over my head and I say to myself, "This tool is going to severely damage these joints, and if it doesn't how the f- am I going to get them back into the housing?". Critical choice here: Do I stop, attempt to put things back together and drive this thing out, or do I continue and in all likelyhood FUBAR this thing and need to tow it? I went with option A. So the AUDI dealer is closed and my buddy wants his garage back so I head out to the store to try to find a bolt that is close to the one that I ruined so I can drive it home and take it to the shop in the morning.... Thankfully the person at the parts store was able to pull out a bunch of similar bolts and I found one that was close, but obviously would not do for a long term solution. I cobbled my injured fawn back together and drove her home with my tail between my legs to nurse my bruised ego.

Here I sit, after riding my bike into work, telling all you newbies out there that the messing with CV joints etc is no simple task, even though it looks simple in the manual.

Now, for anyone who has done this successfully and is smiling right now I plead with you... How on earth should this job have been done? How does one disconnect the upper control arms without completely breaking things?
More importantly how does one get the arms back in, there is no room inside the wheel well to hammer the arms in? Please, spare no details because my curiousity has got the best of me.


Hope you enjoyed my torment, now I have to go call a real mechanic...

x

 

The trick is to hammer the joints out from the bottom.

But, yes, this is no job for a noob, no matter what they say! Don't feel bad. You gave it a good shot then did the smart thing - you recognized when you were over your head and stopped!

Bob

 

Usually, for me a trick involves smoke, mirrors, and maybe a clown. BFH sounds fairly straight forward, believe me, before my sanity told me to stop I was using a hammer... But I was real nervous about striking the control arms for fear of bending. I tried using the now demolished screw to tap the ends of the ball joint out of the housing, and even tried conjouring up the car repair spirit. Either way, I am very interested in seeing this done "professionally" and even more curious to see how on earth the control arms would be put back in place...

So, no ball joint removal tool? Maybe that tool is for replacing ball joints that are already messed up and you don't care about ruining them... Help me understand this enigma!

 

So I went to my local mechanic. He let me help with the repair and here are some things he did that did not seem obvious or are discouraged by the repair manual.

First, he removed the front brake caliper from the rotor and took the rotor off. This gave more work space inside the wheel well. The mechanic thought for a moment about "going in" from the bottom but then thought more and decided I was right (per the manual) to go in from the top. However, he took off the bolt for the upper control arms and pulled off the bolt for the steering assembly, which was cautioned against by the manual. (The manual refers to these as bolts 3 and 4 and says removing them can change the axle adjustment). The mechanic did not seem concerned even when I asked about it. Anyway, since I had already gotten the bolt out (which was beyond difficult) and had replaced it with a temp bolt, it came out very easy.

The control arms needed some persuasion. After several solid whacks on the wheel bearing housing, the control arms were still stuck. More banging and even a little pry inside the slits of the wheel bearing housing (also cautioned against in the manual) still did not free things up. We started tapping the control arm knuckles out from the bottom and with the little prying they finally broke free. The mechanic was impressed with how well they were seized in there.

outer CV came free from the wheel bearing housing very easily and the mechanic was not interested in messing with it inside the wheel well. He decided the 3 minutes to take off the inner CV was worth it, and I agree after going through this. It was very easy to deal with the joint once outside the vehicle. The kit I bought had the "pressing screw" as part of the kit. The screw in the kit has fully threaded and longer than the bolt on the vehicle. The mechanic concluded that the bolt in the kit was not intended to replacing the one in the vehicle, and I agreed. BTW the bolt in the kit was a 27mm hex bolt, and the one on the car was a 17mm allen. Popping off the CV was easy, and putting the new boot and other parts on were fine. Hitting the new CV back on to the axle took a few attempts, but was easy. Putting everything back together was easy too. Note that the inner CV joint screws were easy to get at and the heat shield wasn't really a factor in getting the whole axle out. It was weird though, only one of the inner CV screws had a washer on it... Not sure what is up with that.

Messing with the steering arm screws (or whatever this part is called) seemed to have no effect, as far as I can tell even though the manual said not to take that off. When I do this again (which is probably) I will probably try to follow the steps in the manual and see the differences. Anyway, that is how it ended, oh and the total time to do this was just under 1 hour...

To me the jury is still out on whether buying a complete axle rebuild kit or replacing just the joint is better, but I couldn't find a cheap axle and the amount of labor is closely matched. My vote is for just doing the CV joint because some articles have noted that a new axle may not fit right and may require alignment and axle adjustment.

 

personally as a tech it would take too long to explain how to do it and even harder to tell a total new to cars man with zero knowledge on these things as it would blow your mind but you did well it seems and the and your first positive step was the book and a good search of the Internet would be very helpful

http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=...a=N&tab=wi

 

Meh, Spent 200 bux got a rebuilt axle and someone else to do it! lol