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Changed drive shaft, Differential oil seal and Ball joint dust covers (Phew)...with photos....

Sprackers

Enthusiast
Messages
353
Location
Tunbridge Wells England
After a lot of reasearch and help from you lot I manged to tackle a changing my drive shaft.

Not too proud to say that this was a big job for me.

Hope this helps anyone thinking about doing it. There may be better ways but I didnt have a clue before starting.

Before starting I ordered a couple of specialist tools and parts:

Ball joint seperator
10mm square tranmission oil adaptor (photo 2)
New drive shaft
New dust covers
New oil seal

1. Prioir to tackling this job over the week before I sprayed WD40 on all the nuts and bolts that according to research were likely to cause problems.

So I started by emptying the tranmission fluid.

Remove the drain plug (Photo1)

TIP: make sure you can remove the filler nut first (the one on the side in the photo 3). you dont want to empty the fluid and find you cant fill it back up again.
 
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Out she comes all black and thick....30 year old transmission oil.
 
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I emptied all into a platic bottle. It smelt burnt and strong.......as it was expected to according to Haynes.

That plastic bottle was 2Ltr so I estimated 1.5ltrs came out. It had been leaking prior to all this. Drops on the driveway.
 
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Jacked up the whole front of the car, the way according to Haynes and also supported with another car support. You can never have too many.

took the wheel off and revaealed the main wheel nut which I immediately sprayed with WD40.
This nut was going to be tough to get off according to all reasearch.

According to some it was recommended that I had a small piece of pipe to slide over the socket wrench arm to help undo this one.
 
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TIP: make sure you support the caliper because if it falls off it will rip out the brake fluid pipe.

I used four cable ties linked together and round the top suspension support arm and round th caliper.

With that done proceed.

Take off the brake caliper. I had problems here getting this off.

Round the back are two nuts you have to undo.

Already sprayed and they came out ok.
 
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There a two little shoes to slide out on the top and bottom of the brake caliper, but before you do you have to get your head inside the wheel arch and look at the back inside of the caliper pull out the two little pins holding the two shoes in place.
 
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Now you can tap out the shoes. Tap them out from the inside out towards you. Not too stiff they came out quite easily.
 
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The caliper should come off but mine didnt. Haynes says get a flat head screw drive and prize the piston back (inside down the back of the caliper) and push the piston back in and you should be able to easily take off the caliper.

Mine I think was stiff or rusted but my piston didnt move.

Anyway I wiggled and pulled the whole caliper away from the disk and slowely I manged to get it off.

TIP: get a cadboard box split and open, and lay it flat under the caliper and wheel so when things drop down they dont hit the concrete directly.

I then undid the main wheel nut. After all the spraying It came off without too much problem. Didnt need the piece of pipe!
 
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Now for the Ball joints.

Undid the nuts holding the two ball joints together.

It seemed to me that there are two differnt sizes of dust covers because the two ball joints seem different sizes.

For the ball joint on the left I bought new dust covers size: 28mm (bottom diameter) X 12mm (top diameter)

The ball joint on the right (as we look from the wheel) looks bigger so I have ordered the bigger size (33.5mm X 13mm).

The one on the left as we look at it in the photo I had to cut away the dust covers(its was stuck on and split ..30 years old!) so I could slide in the ball joint seperator.

I was happy to do this as I had bought spares to replace the dust cover.

The top right ball joint dust cover was in good nick and It was easier to get the Ball joint seperator tool in between the dust cover and the bottom screw.

When the ball joint seperator tighted it split the ball joint, it made a big BANG!!!. Glad I had the tool.
 
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The wheel assembly flops foward. I got my tool box to support the wheel so this it doesnt just hang there putting pressure on the joint underneath.

"Err....Hello" its Zippy from Rainbow pretending to be a Renault 4 drive shaft. The heat was gettng up by this time....

Drive shaft removal:

I tucked my legs under the car and grabbed the shaft and pushed it towards the gear box. This enabled to me to get the other end of the drive shaft out of the wheel. Its tight but by no means too difficult.
 
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And once the wheel end came out, It just slides out of the gear box end easily.

Voila its out!....and laid next to the new one.

Make sure its the rights size etc...
 
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well done that man once you have done it once it is a easy operation as you know what to expect
 
Nicely documented Sprackers, I'm going to be doing mine in the next few weeks. Well done!
 
Right next the differntial:

I had acertained previosly that the oil leak (see previous thread entitled CV joint....this is what started this whole process) was in fact coming from the bottom of the differential ring. (Im sure thats not the right word for it)...anyway

I bought new oil seals for this to stop the leak.(rightly or wrongly I assumed it was the seals)

With the drive shaft out, I cleaned the gunk and oil from the round differnetial ring. As you can see I exposed some numbers which was handy.

When you undo this, according to Haynes and others, its a good idea to remember how many turns it takes to undo so when you put it back you do the same amount. In revealing the numbers I had my reference point. The segment with the numbers was at the bottom of the circle.

I then undid the retaing nut at the top of the ring. This holds the whole thing in place and stops it from unding itself over time.

With that out I got my long nosed pliers in and with a bit of force manged to slowely undo the differential. (This was had been sprayed a few times leading upto the whole job)
 
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biggest problem with taking photos to illustrate dismantling is getting oil on the phone when taking pictures an assistant is useful to act as film crew
 
Fantastic ...out she came.

Outside and the inside of the differential ring, and for good measure what it looks inside the gear box behind the differential...Ooooooo

I looked at the seal it looked ok , but I had new ones so............
 
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OK now to get the seal out. Easy.

TIP: I got a nail and flipped it upside down and put the head into one of the two holes on the outside the Differential ring (see photo) and tapped the end through the hole and the old seal popped out underneath.
 
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The new seal in by fistly pressing it in then I used a big socket and and drift and lightly tapped it in evenly.

You can check if its all the way in by flipping it over and looking through the tiny holes on the outside and you can see if the new seal is right against the holes.
 
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At this point I realised...YES! I am technically half way there. Its now just about putting it all back together.

thoughts of a cold Beer started to creep into my mind.
 
Right Differential back in.

Remembering the amount of turns , in my case 7 turns, I replaced the differential and tightened it up.

7 was right plus a little extra for good measure. I then made sure the retaining nut at the top was in a position that it was tight aginst the ring (it has notches) so that it wasnt going to undo at all.
 
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