New gears, then CV joint grease everywhere!

Draco · **Posted:** Thu Nov 25, 2010 9:17 pm

I just had new 4.10 gears installed and was feeling on top of the world. :pepper:

The diff shop said to break the new gears in 15--20 mi at a time for the first 200 miles, with a minimum of 30 minutes between sets. I did all that. I was up at 4:00 this morning, and put on the last 60 miles by 7:00 or so. Actually, it's been great. It's nice to have some acceleration again! New gears = good. Good, good, good.

So, my wife and I set out on Reddington Pass road. We live 10 or 15 minutes from there. For those in Arizona, I'm ashamed to say I haven't been on it much. For those from elsewhere, here is someone's picture:

I hadn't really planned to use 4WD until I had 500 miles on the gears. But I was told I could do whatever I wanted after 200 miles. I was having a little trouble in 2Hi so I put it in 4Hi and we went that way for maybe 10 miles. We saw a rest / staging area and stopped for a pit stop. At that point I saw what appeared to be water in the front driver side wheel well. :?:

Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be grease! :shock:

Presumably, C.V. joint grease.

Otherwise things didn't look too bad and I wasn't hearing any noise. We weren't more than 20 mi from home, so I put it in 2WD and limped home. It was early in the day, so we transferred our stuff to my wife's Subaru and we went to Saguaro Natl Monument West and went hiking. So it was a good day anyway! It's good to have a backup vehicle with a little bit of ground clearance and AWD.

When we got home I crawled under the Jeep and inspected the area around the driver side half shaft. It is definitely a very viscous grease, and not oil. It looks like new grease: thick with a yellow-green color; and not old black, thin grease. It is the inboard side of the half shaft, by the differential.

It looks like the grease is getting thrown upwards onto the strut and thereabouts, and then dripping onto some other components like the lower control arm. There's so much grease that I thought the boot must be torn. I felt around some with my hand and couldn't find a tear. Didn't try real hard as I wanted to preserve the evidence, as it were.

I see no evidence of problems with the front differential itself. So at this point I'm thinking it's just the CV joint boot or at worst the CV joint itself. For a lifted KJ with 83K miles on it that just had its front differential dropped, it's not surprising that there's a CV joint problem. So if that's all it is I'm relieved.

One more little thing. When I checked my tires first thing in the morning, I noticed that one lug nut was missing from each of the two front wheels. I had to rob two nuts from my spare carrier and put the spare in the cab. The one on the driver side with the CV joint went on fine. The one on the passenger side did not because the stud was stripped. Mainly a red herring and no big deal as studs can be replaced. The point though is that I spent quite a bit of time around the front wheel wells and didn't notice the grease. So I'm thinking the CV joint probably started spewing grease only after I went into 4HI. Does this make sense?

If it's just the CV joint that's not a huge deal compared to the differential and I just need to fix it. If it's just the boot, then it's just the boot. If the CV joint needs to be replaced, then I have one huge question. More than anything else in this post, this is what I want to know. Can I go with the OEM CV shaft, or should I go with the higher dollar J.E. Reel shaft with 3/8" of material removed from the inner joint face??????

:?:

Here is the JBA link: http://jeepinbyal.com/prod-CV_axle_shaft_driver_side-489.aspx, and here is the link to J.E. Reel: http://www.reeldriveline.com/catalog/ I can't find any references to the KJ at the J.E. Reel site, but JBA lists them as the manufacturer. I'm not exactly sure how much lift I have in the front, somewhere between 2.5 and 3".

I have no problem spending the extra $250 for the special shaft if needed. Mainly I'm worried about lead time. I'll bet I can get a new CV assembly tomorrow from the dealer. Whereas it will take the better part of a week to get one from JBA, assuming they have one in inventory.

???

Any input is appreciated as I have to move on this tomorrow (Friday).

Ernie

Draco · **Posted:** Fri Nov 26, 2010 1:17 am

I've been searching around and found some relevant stuff.

Here is a 2006 post by Se7enLC regarding "Grease everywhere, CV boot intact..??"

http://www.lostjeeps.com/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9866&p=95199

So far I haven't found a CV boot problem, but I'll have to look more carefully. That post suggests that there may not be a problem at all, and that some extra grease may just getting squeezed out of the boot. There were times when it sounded like the left front suspension might be bottoming out. Anyway, I hope that's the case and there's no problem.

Did find some posts about the JE Reels half shafts. So if I do need a new half shaft, maybe that's the way to go.
http://www.lostjeeps.com/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=27306
http://www.lostjeeps.com/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=49472

In any case it's looking like this may not be too big of a deal.

Draco · **Posted:** Fri Nov 26, 2010 1:35 pm

I took the Jeep to the dealer. They're just 2 miles from my house, so I get most of my service done there. Plus I like the shuttle service, waiting room and donuts!

They're replacing the mysterious stripped wheel stud. Plus they're making the lug nuts more uniform. Over the years I've acquired quite a collection. The ones on the left rear are some funky size that requires me to carry a second socket. I use a long 1/2" drive breaker bar with a very strong impact wrench socket as a lug wrench. OEM lug wrenches are a joke for every vehicle I've had.

It turns out that the inner CV joint boot is torn. I'm paying them to fix it rather than going back to the diff shop. That way we can drive it on Saturday and I can get to work on Monday.

They called me out to look at the driver side half shaft when the vehicle was up on the lift. The inner CV joint is perilously close to the clevis when the wheel's off the ground. I noticed that when I installed it. By contrast, there's much more clearance on the passenger side. Wish I had a cell phone camera so that I could have taken a picture.

There were three Jeep mechanics looking at it. One of them has lifted several Liberty's and is familiar with their issues. The mechanic doing the work thought I might have a CV boot failure the next time the wheel came off the ground. The mechanic with the lifted Liberty experience said he thought it was probably okay.

I did raise the issue of the inner shaft length, saying that JBA sells half shafts that are 3/8" shorter than stock for lifted Liberty's. The mechanics made it sound like my shafts were on the verge of coming out at full extension. That makes it sound like it would be a really bad idea to use the shorter half shafts. I'm confused. :dizzy:

KJWildman · **Posted:** Fri Nov 26, 2010 5:42 pm

Draco wrote:

I did raise the issue of the inner shaft length, saying that JBA sells half shafts that are 3/8" shorter than stock for lifted Liberty's. The mechanics made it sound like my shafts were on the verge of coming out at full extension. That makes it sound like it would be a really bad idea to use the shorter half shafts. I'm confused. :dizzy:

The part of the shaft that is trimmed is at the inner face of the CV to allow more degrees of flex. It doesn't give you a whole lot, but enough to allow a couple degrees more of flex before the CV's bind on themselves or the end of the shaft right at the CV. The length that extends to the diff is not changed. We actually used to to do this with die grinders on U-Joints and the yokes back in the day to allow more droop at the diffs too.

tommudd · **Posted:** Sat Nov 27, 2010 7:24 pm

You're getting misinformation for one and reading things and understanding them in the wrong way.
Also I would go back to the diff shop and show them what you had to have replaced, hope you got it done for free.
I'll add my 2 cents if you'd like to know more

tjkj2002 · **Posted:** Sat Nov 27, 2010 8:59 pm

Draco wrote:

They called me out to look at the driver side half shaft when the vehicle was up on the lift. The inner CV joint is perilously close to the clevis when the wheel's off the ground. I noticed that when I installed it. By contrast, there's much more clearance on the passenger side. Wish I had a cell phone camera so that I could have taken a picture.

Normal as the CV axles are differnet lengths.

Draco · **Posted:** Sun Nov 28, 2010 1:45 am

Thank you all for the information!

Regarding the grinding of the CV shaft, I hadn't really thought about that before and had misunderstood what was being ground. Now I think I understand that it is the face inside the joint mechanism that is ground.

The good thing about this is that I've learned more about the CV joint options and will be ready when the OEM ones fail. I'll more than likely buy the stronger JE Reel assemblies, and install them myself so I'm better prepared to deal with failures on the trail. Maybe I'll even think about carrying spares (cheaper OEM's) on long trips as suggested by bugnout elsewhere.

Regarding the CV boot, I had the dealer fix it. First of all, they had the part and I just wanted it fixed so I could enjoy the weekend and go to work on Monday. Second, I felt that the diff shop had underbid the project and really appreciated that they stuck with their original bid. I didn't feel like they owed me more hours of labor. If there's a problem with the differentials, that's another matter. But those are working great.

Anyway, the work is done, plus the stripped stud is fixed and all my lug nuts match for the first time in years!

My wife and I went out again this morning. We again took Reddington road with no problems. That's a pretty easy road. We went out to the Reddington area (former hamlet that once had a post office and now apparently a ranching community with a little bit of agriculture), then down through Cascabel (another former hamlet, "town" is definitely not the word), and then over to the Muleshoe Ranch area. We were saddlesore by then and went for a short hike hoping to see coatimundi as that's a place to see them. No luck this time. Then we went a ways up the Jackson Cabin trail, which is more of a real 4WD road. It was pretty late in the afternoon by then so we only went maybe 3 mi up the trail before turning around. I'm going to see if anyone is interested in going there in the AZ LOST section as it was really nice. I took pictures, but then when we got home learned that I had forgotten to replace the memory card in the camera. It's supposed to be a 13.4 mi trip one way, taking 3.5 hours one way.

Anyway, everything WORKED GREAT. Didn't have a chance to test the lockers, but the 4.10 gears plus 31" tires gives great hill climbing ability. Part of me is thinking "hmm, I could run 32" tires someday". But another part is saying "but then you couldn't charge up those hills so easily".

So the CV boot is tight, the gears are working, and I'm a happy camper :CAMPING:

Thanks again for the feedback!

New gears, then CV joint grease everywhere!

Who is online