Both of the inner cv's on my 81 GL are shot, and I can't really afford to replace them right now. My main thought is, can I take the shafts out, leaving the cups in the hubs to hold the bearings together, and run around in 4x4 driving the rear tires? What will break on it? Rear diff, u-joints, rear cv's, or can I just flog it as usual?

Flog as usual. Should be fine.

Drive it like you stole it. Should be fine. I've done it on occasion.

 

GD

try to kill it i'd like to know what goes first i know people who drov it rwd for 6 months or more with out a problem it can take it

my gen 1 Brat was in RWD all the time. It was a BLAST! Talk about the burnouts it did SHEESH.

what do you mean by "shot". read through my multiple posts about CV's, i routinely drive thousands and thousands of miles with broken CV boots and clicking joints. no big deal. 50,000 miles on fronts and 100,000 miles on rear broken boots no problems. adding grease in there will quiet them down. i never bother doing a stricktly axle job, complete waste of my time. i'll wait until i have something else semi-axle related before i replace them.

 

if they are actually broke, get some used ones from someone on the board with broken boots and install them and run them forever.

 

stay out of the sand and if they start clicking while driving straight then squirt some grease in them and think about replacing them.

I know a guy who runs a EA82t in RWD. no probs for 9months now I hear.

There tough little cars.

The left one isn't too bad, but I think the right one is bent. Both are completely missing boots, no grease in either, right one has metal dust everywhere. Plus, I think the right one has damaged the tranny, it's dripping gear oil on the cat, and there is a decent amount of play in the stub shaft. Might be time for a 5 speed d/r since only fourth has anything resembling a synchro, but I don't feel like throwing wads of cash at this thing yet.

yeah rwd is a ton a fun ive been driving my brumby round in rwd for near 6 months now and the only drama ive had is tearing the rubber in the rear diff mount and believe me i drive real hard and its definatly the only thing ive broken.

 

 

PS ive only boged my brumby since rwd converting it so beware.

I have heard of 3 people who have stripped out the rear output on the tranny running in RWD (well, 2 of them were tcased offroad rigs, but similar situation). All 3 were cases of abuse though, maybe don't flog it quite as hard as you normally would. It's quite tough, but not as tough as it used to be.

With all the cheap axles available at the local Pull a Part yards, you really should replace the one with the metal dust. It takes less than an hour to replace an axle once you've done a few (pulling them at PAP is just practice). You're welcome to keep running as is but you know that an axle might just break when you really need to use the car....Murphy's law will dictate it'll run fine until you really need it.