Have I got a worn CV joint?

[bobfather]

I'm getting occasional binding sense from the drive train when in slow traffic. At first I thought a brake pad was sticking, not that. I changed the prop UJs, not that. The binding doesn't increase when cornering so it's not pointing to the differential. The four CVs are original with 70k miles on them. After having the suspension off for recoating 10k miles ago I found I was losing grease from the off side wheel end CV and was never able to stem the loss. What does a worn CV feel like? Also how long do they last?

[jojackson4]

Sloppy

[phillpot]

A worn CV joint will often "click" when under load, most noticeable when cornering.

If yours is spewing out it's grease it does sound like it's not "happy" !

Edited by phillpot on Monday 11th October 19:16

[bobfather]

phillpot said:

A worn CV joint will often "click" when under load, most noticeable when cornering.

If yours is spewing out it's grease it does sound like it's not "happy" !

Edited by phillpot on Monday 11th October 19:16

Certainly clicking, binding and releasing but I don't understand the relevance of 'cornering', that would be true for a front wheel drive CV but cornering shouldn't change the action of a rear CV

[TwinKam]

You can check with them on the car by testing for rotational freeplay across the joint (backlash) and lateral play of the driveshaft inside the joint (grab and shake the shaft). Linear freeplay (plunging) is OK. To go further than that it needs to be off the car, to check for smoothness of movement through all angles and in all directions. Inspection of the balls and their tracks is obviously a step further.

[Steve_D]

Difficult to define 'worn out' when GKN technical support cannot define a rotational wear tolerance.

Waits (and hopes) for someone to produce some figures. It is difficult to explain to a customer that their joints need replacement when you can't say "yours have X more wear than the allowed tolerance".

Steve