Long story short: Let friend drive car (an 90 Legacy, 2.2 AWD). CV boot and axle on the passenger side front looks to have exploded and the axle has seperated from the wheel.

 

Now, the repair is pretty obvious. My questions are this:

 

1) There was no clacking or banging to suggest the CV joint was going bad. Seemed to be driving just fine. Are there any other symptoms for a CV going bad?

 

2) Assuming nothing was wrong with it in the first place, what would cause this sort of sudden failure to occur?

 

3) Anything else I should have looked at when I take this to the shop? (Possibly related to question 2)

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Chris

Is the car a manual?

Is the friend trustworthy?

Were there nice AWD burnouts round town?

Just a thought

Is the car a manual?

Is the friend trustworthy?

Were there nice AWD burnouts round town?

Just a thought

Yes.

Mostly.

Doubt it, this was a one time deal. He says it happened during normal driving, and really don't have a reason to doubt it. Until there is a massive amount of evidence to the contrary, I'll assume he wasn't misbehaving.

Probably failed under acceleration during a side street turn or maybe a Rockford 180.

It's a '90. My '91 has had both sides replaced. Chalk it up to old age and be glad you didn't kill your friend.

I would have expected the symptoms you described. Some people smell burning grease that gets spun up onto the hot exhaust or engine due to a cracked boot.

It's a '90. Anything else could be wrong with the front end, but probably not.

Yeah... its a bit of puzzle to me... No noise, no smell... odd.

 

If I remember right, there are a few pins in the cv assembly holding things together. Possible one of them snapped?

i had a cv joint fail in this way with no warning. it was fine and noise free until i accelerated through a u-turn and it flung grease about and seperated. it was a remanufactured half shaft.

i had a cv joint fail in this way with no warning. it was fine and noise free until i accelerated through a u-turn and it flung grease about and seperated. it was a remanufactured half shaft.

Interesting. What was it that failed? I'm pretty sure this was an original axle, new boot though.

i installed a NEW axle two summers ago and it blew up within a week. what was i doing? driving less than 15 miles per hour in my parking lot at work, driving straight. it blew to pieces. the TCU was cycling the transfer clutches for the 4WD on and off, a good thing because it allowed me to turn around and get back to the parking lot where i installed another (used) axle the next day in the parking lot which is still in the car 50,000 miles later.

 

i was driving between baltimore and DC just a couple months ago and noticed a guy totally spun out in the median. pulled over to help pull him out. no pulling him out - his 1 or 2 year old...can't remember what it was, dodge intrepid looking car, anyhow the CV joint had totally blown to pieces spinning him out of control somehow. the joint was in a bazillion pieces.

 

wouldn't surprise me if their paying some guy 3 dollars a day in korea to assemble cv joints for 16 hours a day.