Mat123

I have a 98 A4 v6. I'm in the process of servicing my outer CV joints and I'm at the point where I have the axles removed and am hammering on the ball hub with a brass drift. Just as illustrated in the tech article and on page S 40-11 of the Bentley.

The problem is I've whacked on it about as hard as I can without swinging so hard I'm going to miss and break my finger and the things aren't coming off, either side. My question is how hard are you guys having to pound these to make them come off? The tech article doesn't mention they're particularly stubborn.

I am at a certain disadvantage because I don't have a vise and am having to lay the axles on some 2x4s and stand on them while striking, but they aren't budging much with the hits so it seems the impact of the blows isn't diminished much.

These are the hollow axles too, so the tighten the bolt back in to press them off method won't work.

Kris Hansen

Is there a C clip to remove on those? I seem to remember seeing that somewhere..

ralley

comes right off.

Žob

Tighten the bolt down and it'll pop that joint right off. Trust me. The factory Audi tool does the SAME thing

Mat123

Well, the issue with using the press off technique is these particular axles are _hollow_.

In fact, I started working on these before my service manual arrived and I even knew certain axles were hollow and I did try the bolt technique. What happens is when the bolt twists to the point it contacts the axle's edge it just gets tight and starts threading into the axle. When you remove the bolt you'll see the section of threads you forced into the axle flattened up. And backing the bolt out requires a decent amount of torque with the threads damaged this way.

I understand the bolt replicates the action of the special tool, but if you look at the Bentley you'll see that the special tool isn't even an option on the hollow axle, you have to hammer on that one. As my experience showed anyway.

Mat123

There is a clip on the on the axle shaft outside the CV joint. In order towards the outside of the axle there is the clip, the dished washer, the plastic spacer washer, then comes the ball hub (inner star piece of the CV). As the article notes, "the [hollow] axle shaft can be identified by a circlip on the axle shaft at the outer joint".

The illustration also indicates there's a groove further to the tip of the axle with a "circlip (snap ring)" that must be the thing that's really blocking the joint from removal. Indeed, when I removed the accessible circlip and pushed the washers to the inside this opened up some slack where the joint can be pushed inward a few millimeters and pushing it back the other way you can feel it clunk to a stop where it's presumably being blocked by the clip covered by the joint.

There's something slightly odd I noticed too. The illustration A40-0199 of the tip of the axle with the washers and clips shows the circlip on the outside with eyelets you can engage it by. On my car on both axles the clips in this position have no eyelets and look almost as if the section the eyelets would've resided on were broken off. So I couldn't use circlip pliers and had to work them out of the groove with flat tip screwdrivers.

Žob

Is this a FWD car? Could be different. In that situation you NEED a vise. There is a c clip you need to spread and then beat it off. So it requires 2 people. Have fun. Those suck.

Mat123

Haha. Truth is after I found out I could get lifetime warranteed remanufactured axle assemblies for $80 from Autozone I decided to buy those rather than boot kits for $30 a piece. So at this point I'm just trying to get the outer joints off to do just that: see what the axle end looks like. And the challenge is provoking.

They're hollow all the way, too. I took a 1/4" rod that was at least a foot long and could push it in the whole way.

I'm curious which specific cars have the hollow axles. The manual describes two types of axle assemblies, one with inner CV joint and one with inner triple rotor (tripode) joint. I have the inner triple rotor joint.

From the tranmission sections in the Bentley it looks like it might've been only v6 FWD manuals that had the inner triple rotor drive axles. (Only for those did I find the footnote "drive axle with triple rotor joint".) I haven't found any comment regarding which cars have the hollow axle, only that they can be identified by the extra circlip.

I'll guess the hollow axle corresponds to the inner triple rotor and therefore we're talking about a limited set of cars, v6 FWD manuals. Mine's a 98 and I remember the following year (I think) they switched to all manuals being Quattro.

Žob

Honestly those remanufactured ones might cause more harm than good...