Slowcrash_101

You're likely fine if you cleaned out the old grease. If the grease gets a little thinner worst case it's now as viscous as the Honda stuff.

Mr.Matchbox

I had this job done by my trusty (since 1988 - and often hanging around in his shop, watching him wrenching) mechanic. I dont want to remove the driveshaft in my garage. Its the axle nut. I dont have the tools.
I do 90% of the work at my cars and 100% at my bike by myself, but sometimes its better to have a professional do the job... know your limits.
I know that he washed out the old grease completly. We talked about the job in detail. He is well aware that different types of grease dont mix well.

So, wait and see...

Mr.Matchbox

I send redline Oil a E-Mail about the use of the CV2 grease in Tripod Joints. Here is the answer:

Christian,

Thank you for contacting Red Line Oil, the CV-2 is suitable for use in tripod joints and not too thick.

Regards,

Dave *********

SheDrivesIt

Just a follow up. Adding half shaft spacers completely resolved the vibration issue. I got Blox brand 2 piece spacers from Amazon. I did not care for the hardware that came with them (they came with 8.8 grade black socket head cap screws and flange nuts). OEM bolts were 10.2 grade plated flange bolts and flange nuts so I sourced plated 10.2 flange bolts and flange nuts from McMaster-Carr in 40mm length to accommodate the extra spacer width (10mm).

Bolts were pretty frozen but a rented impact wrench made quick work of the removal. Left side was not very difficult to install and torque. Right side is a bitch because of the two exhaust pipes under the flange made installing the new spacers difficult as you need to hold the cv cup back with one hand and install the spacers with the other. Torqueing on that side required 3 hands as you need one fur a box wrench to hold the nut, another to hold the torque wrench in place due to the length of extension required to get past the two pipes plus frame and a third to pull the torque wrench. It might be easier to pull off on a full lift or by dropping the exhaust but I got it done once I got an extra hand from a buddy.

Thanks to all for your input even though the thread wandered a bit off topic.

engifineer

Good to hear!

thefletch01

Hello. I appreciate this topic has been done to death but this thread seems the most useful and recent.

My car has all the symptoms of pitted cups, but are there any other possible causes?
15k miles ago I had the cups swapped around, it’s been fine since. I've just refurbished the suspension and lowered it 25mm at the same time and I now have a vibration when accelerating from 40 to 60mph, which is the same at any RPM.
I’d have thought that lowering the car would mean bearings are sat against a relatively fresh area of cup, hence my asking about other causes?

Another piece to the puzzle could be the axel nut. I cleaned the hub and nut with a wire wheel and greased everything with copper slip (controversially probably), tightened to 150ft/lb as that’s the limit of my wrench and then gave it some more with a breaker bar but it didn’t seem to rotate any further.

I also seem to have a vibration when braking but I’m yet to understand the circumstances on that more.

Note: I didn’t remove the drive shafts when I did the suspension, I just tie them out up out the way.

Car Analogy

You have to tighten the axle nuts the additional 60 degrees. Aka one nut face worth. You have to lube tbe threads and nut and washer faces to accomplish this. Get a longer bar, and perhaps a 3/4 inch socket set (Harbor Freight since you won't be working on diesel trucks every day and probably won't use this set much).

Look up the axle nut thread again and follow its instructions.

The axle cup vibes come, not so much from the wear, but from bearing crossing over the ridge from worn to smooth area. Hence you lower suspension, and now you are going from bearing riding worn only area to both worn and smooth areas. Hence the vibes.

The cure is to get it riding in smooth only area.

But 15k miles shouldn't be enough to cause a new worn area. Since you didn't do the swap, you don't know what axle cup condition was. Maybe a po already did a cup swap, and both sides have some wear, and they had a different ride height at the time, so wear was in a different spot. Thus you initially had no vibes until you lowered it. A lot of speculation there and stars that had to align, but this would explain all your observed symptoms.

Or the vibes could be something unrelated to cups. This is a significant benefit to doing diy, as you can observe other things that can help you diagnose whatever comes next. Right now you have a blind spot because you don't know what mechanic saw when doing the swap.

Also, what grease did they use when they did the cup swap?

thefletch01

I'm not suggestion you are wrong, but the axel nut topic is full of misinformation, I feel like I've read dozens of the thread about it. As I understand it the 60 degrees bit is on top of factory torqued nuts, 180ft/lb if fitting from loose????

Hmm, I'll buy some split axel spacers as they seem a easy to fit and recommended for lowered cars anyway.

As you say, lots of speculation but there is a chance I need new cups so I'll source some replacements before removing mine I think.

Car Analogy

I agree the axle nut thread is in desperate need of a redo, a summary of the final recommendations. As it is you have to read dozens of pages of often contradictory content to try and ferret out the end results of tortured story.

I hated it when I was asking about how to do axle nut, and was pointed to that mess of a thread. All the info you need is there they said. Yeah, but its buried in dozens of pages of bad info.

We need a simple, yet comprehensive axle nut diy.

Slowcrash_101

B serious and Billman already put this to bed, I agree it needs to be updated. So far the correct way is the ORIGINAL 180ft/lbs + 60 degrees, NOT 220ft/lbs + 60 degrees. From my own personal experience 180ft/lbs + 60 degrees with face and threads greased comes out to around 290ft/lbs of torque. That's probably the safe upper margin for tightening torque on the axle nut. The torque specs for the front wheel axle nut is 240ft/lbs I feel this is sufficient for the rear as well.

The true value is reached at by feel, but you need a good bit of experience to develop that feel, so as an alternative you can do 180ft/lbs + 60 degrees with a greased nut face and you'll be roughly where you need to be.

If I'm wrong, no problem, as long as you tell me why.