Driveshaft Knuckle Came Out

Driveshaft CV During Control Arm Swap

Q

After replacing my lower control arm on the passenger side the drive shaft seems to be stuck extended too far out from the joint within the inner boot. The inner boot is extended fairly far with the bellows extended quite a bit further than the how the bellows look on the outer boot. In doing the control arm, I had removed the two bolts that attached the strut to the knuckle in order to get as mush play as possible when wrestling the lower control arm and ball joint back together. I am assuming in that in the process of wrestling the control arm and ball joint bolt to align, without the knuckle being attached to the strut, I inadvertently angled the knuckle too far past the travel limit of the inner joint on the drive shaft.

A

matthew1 » When I did my control arms I was worried about the joints getting pushed out from the force of the spring. When the control arm comes off there’s little holding (or nothing, depending how much you’ve detached) the joint in, and we all know the springs push hard. For what it’s worth to everyone out there, they push far, too.

gjz30075 » Thought I’d bring up this old post because I, too , had this problem on the rh side trying to replace the control arm. I cut the boot circlips and pulled the boot back to see why the joint wouldn’t go back to together. It’s an incredibly simple joint and it looked like I just had to wrestle it back in.

Jacking up the strut was near impossible because there’s nothing to guide it straight up and the pressure from the spring is pushing it down. So I compressed the spring using external spring compressors enough to wrestle the hub and axle up and with my third hand I managed to rotate the axle enough to push it back in the joint. I then quickly attached the control arm to keep it in place.