Half Shaft Spacer Install?
10-13-2011, 01:55 PM
#2
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How about a free alternative to axle spacers?
DIY: CV Bucket Swap
There's a good chance you'll experience some vibration from your axles after lowering your chassis.
DIY: CV Bucket Swap
There's a good chance you'll experience some vibration from your axles after lowering your chassis.
12-29-2015, 02:00 PM
#4
can someone explain how half shaft spacers are supposed to help "restoring" geometry on a lowered car? it seams to me it'd only make things worse... and how come this isn't an issue when lowering other IRS cars?
I drew up a little diagram in CAD. first one is stock height assuming perfectly horizontal half shafts, second is lowered, third is lowered the same amount but with a spacer added. the angle only gets more extreme when adding the spacer... so what exactly is the spacer helping?
I didn't draw it to any specific dimensions or lower it a specific amount, just a basic diagram...
I drew up a little diagram in CAD. first one is stock height assuming perfectly horizontal half shafts, second is lowered, third is lowered the same amount but with a spacer added. the angle only gets more extreme when adding the spacer... so what exactly is the spacer helping?
I didn't draw it to any specific dimensions or lower it a specific amount, just a basic diagram...
12-29-2015, 02:59 PM
#5
its not a matter of angle it is a matter of where the CV is contacting the housing.
After many miles of use the CV will wear a depression into the housing. When you lower the car the CV is pulled out of the housing slightly. The clunking that you will often hear after lowering is the axle jumping from riding in the inboard CV's original depression to riding in the outboard CV's original depression. This causes a lot of uneven loading and can destroy CVs very quickly.
The "best" solution is to replace the axles with fresh new ones, the issue is not that the axles are now too short, just that they are not riding in the grooves that they previously made. Spacers are used because people generally don't want to spend $1000 on new axles, they provide a good cheap option to fix the issue by moving the CV housing to better line up with the new axle position.
After many miles of use the CV will wear a depression into the housing. When you lower the car the CV is pulled out of the housing slightly. The clunking that you will often hear after lowering is the axle jumping from riding in the inboard CV's original depression to riding in the outboard CV's original depression. This causes a lot of uneven loading and can destroy CVs very quickly.
The "best" solution is to replace the axles with fresh new ones, the issue is not that the axles are now too short, just that they are not riding in the grooves that they previously made. Spacers are used because people generally don't want to spend $1000 on new axles, they provide a good cheap option to fix the issue by moving the CV housing to better line up with the new axle position.
12-30-2015, 09:50 AM
#7
As nmrado posted, swapping the CV cups left-right achieves the same effect of introducing a brand-new wear location, and costs no money (minus a tube of grease). It can be done without popping any ball joints (just remove the upper control arm bolts to get enough play to remove them).
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