Drive Shaft

[foxy600]

I have some play in the offside rear drive shaft on my S2. I have been told that re-greasing them sorts them out and is a job even a novice like me could do. Is this true?, is it just a case of putting the car on axle stands and crawling under with a pot of grease?

[tvrgit]

Depends on how much play there is. If not too bad, re-greasing can help.

They are meant to use a graphite grease though, not ordinary LM or whatever.

What you have to do is remove one of the rubber boot clips, and inject the grease evenly while rotating the shaft. Halfords (and others) sell a kit which includes the grease, injector and cable ties for securing the boot again. You get enough grease to do all 4 joints. When I did it, I replaced one of the joints and took the other 3 apart and cleaned all the old grease out first. You should do this if any of the rubber boots are split and have allowed grit in.

Finally, you could try taking the drive shaft off and putting it back the other way - this reverses the direction of push, and also the joint angles, and may make the joint last a little longer.

[Le TVR]

tvrgit said:

Finally, you could try taking the drive shaft off and putting it back the other way - this reverses the direction of push, and also the joint angles, and may make the joint last a little longer.

This is the best technique.
As all the contact points in the CV joints will be moved to somewhere else where there is no wear.

Just drop the shaft off, clean up the joints and regrease them and install reversed.