Where's the bounce coming from?

[chrism]

Cleaning, greasing, and re-booting might be OK if all that happened was the boot was torn and the grease slung out. However, when the internals are actually worn, there is machining and new balls involved in order to remove the excess play restore smooth operation.

[abscate]

Yes, you just clean and Repack, then put on new GKN boots.

Once all the grease is off you inspect the balls and faces for damages. Shiny spots are ok, mild pitting is ok. Deep gouges or cracks are rare, but mean replacement

Cheap crap axles $100, 12-18 month life
Junkyard axle with new grease and boots, same and 10 years

[firstv70volvo]

I watched a couple of youtubes on rebuilding cv joints, basically (according to these videos) it looks like a disassembly, clean out, grease up and new boot. Is that really all there is to a rebuild? No bearing replacement? Looks messy, but doable. Dave

Inspecting the joints when disassembled and cleaned is the key and determines what to do next. If there's nothing too worn or damaged then you can repack and reboot and that's all that's needed. Worn outer joints will make a clicking noise and more so when turning and a bad inner joint will typically cause a vibration under load, which improves when you let up on the throttle.

I've attached a photo of what happens inside the inner joint that causes the vibration and what to look for. If there's a pitted area where the inner tri-pod bearings slide in and out then the inner joint will have to replaced, which means you'll need another axle and like others have mentioned you should get a new GKN axle or one from the salvage yard. The pitted area causes the vibration and it's more of a shudder or side-to-side type vibration because of what's happening when the tri-pod bearing is trying to slide in and out in the inner joint cup when there's a pitted area. This can't be machined as far as I know so replacement is a must. It's also very difficult to tell which axle is causing the problem without inspection of the inner joint cup. Without inspection when disassembled you'll be guessing which axle to replace if it's a pitted inner joint.


Not a Volvo inner axle joint but what to look for when apart. The pitted area in this joint caused a very annoying vibration under load.

Shudder from bad inner joint cup.jpg (35.68 KiB) Viewed 350 times

If you do decide to disassemble the axles you may find the inner joint has stacked areas that won't let you pull out the tri-pod bearings, the raised lip will need to ground or filed down or peened down to pull the inner joint apart.

volvo inner cv joint staked end.jpg (82.67 KiB) Viewed 350 times