cdn A6 4.2

I tackled this job today. Not a real fun experience (took about 5 hrs). I used the Bentley and Kris Hansen's write-up as a guide, and thought the hard part was going to be getting the pinch bolt out to free the upper control arms. I was wrong. The pinch bolt came out with no issues at all. With the upper control arms out of the upright and the CV shaft popped out of the hub, it was very obvious that it would not fit out behind the wheel as in the tech article, but only in front. The large size of the HP2 calipers prevent it from fitting out the back. There was very little space to work with the shaft in front of the wheel, so I did had to remove it from the car. Getting the joint off of the shaft was also a bit of an issue. I tried the axle bolt trick, and it failed miserably. The bolt seemed to just keep screwing into the shaft. As I later found out, the end of the shaft has a ~1" long hole tapped in it that is about the same width as the 14mm axle bolt (the pics of Kris's procedure show the hole in the end of the shaft, but it looks smaller in diameter). My hub puller wouldn't work for the same reason...the tapped hole made the bolt in the puller too short to do anything. I wound up shoving a 1.5" piece of a 12mm bolt into the hole, then screwed in the axle bolt, and the joint popped right off.

Learning from my experiences today, I could do it again in about 1.5 hrs. So if you have an HP2-caliper equipped car, be prepared to pull the shaft from the car. Also be prepared to either use the Audi tool for removing the joint from the shaft or improvise like I did and used the "hunk of bolt method" and the axle bolt.

The good news...$15 in parts and my labor. My indy would have wanted $200 for this job, so I did save a few $$$.

Flint'sA6

that would sound funny taken out of context!

I dig those S6 wheels!

Press

good job.....

slimmn

I've done doing this job three different ways (Passat 2.8, A6 2.7t and 4.2), and all worked. Shows you there's more than one way to skin a cat. Also gives me more confidence each time I work on the car.

Eric 2.7

rear lower control arm at the subframe.

If you turn the steering wheel away from the side you are working on, you can pull the joint out of the hub fairly easily w/o disconnecting the shaft on the inboard side.

cdn A6 4.2

And could get the shaft out of the hub without issue with it still attached to the tranny. Since I removed the upper control arms, I was forced to pull the entire shaft due to poor clearance between the end of the joint and the brake rotor.

If I need to do this again (I'm guessing the passenger side one will go soon...they always seem to fail in pairs), maybe I'll try the lower control arm method. Now that I know how to get the joint off easily, doing it with the shaft attached shouldn't be a problem if there's clearance.

Eric 2.7

didn't want to remove the inner flange and I know from my suspension install that my flange bolt is going to be harder than Dick's hat band to get off.

cdn A6 4.2

But they weren't that difficult. I had the M8 triple square bit from work on my '92 100S, so I didn't even have to buy a new bit. There are 6 bolts total, and 3 of them are easily accessible at one time. To get to the other three, I just popped the car in neutral, and rotated the shaft 180 degrees (I already had it free from the hub by this point). The torque spec on them is only ~40 ft-lbs, so they all cracked loose pretty easily.

Trust me, if I had the room to work on the joint while it was still on the car, I'd do it. I probably will try the lower control arm method next time, because chances are slim I'd luck out again and have the upper control arm pinch bolt come out without issue.

cdn A6 4.2

And it appears you too did it slightly different than the normal procedure. Give me some confidence that the published way is not the only way.

The way I look at it...if I had finished quicker, I'd have been doing yard work!

cdn A6 4.2

I'm wondering of the wider diameter hole in the end of the CV shaft maybe limited to the 4.2.