Axle Replacement Quagmire

[akeven]

Alright so this is a weird one, especially for myself and my buddy who have repaired a few axles in our day.

 

Today I was replacing the front passenger side axle on my 97 legacy and we ran into a hell of a time disengaging the old axle splines from the hub. After we fought and fought with a 3 jaw puller, we finally got the old axle disengaged, and we got the axle off after removing the drift pin.

 

Now the extremely weird part. I lined up the new axle, installed the drift pin, but not we can't get the splines of the new driveshaft to go through the hub, i.e. in otherwords, the axle won't fully go through the hub and I cannot get the large driveshaft nut on it. Upon closer investigation, it seems that there are some nasty wear marks on the inside splines of the hub, which we could evidently see from the old axle splines.

 

My question at this point is, has anyone else ever ran into this much trouble replacing a driveaxle? I'm hoping that I can get away with gently filing away at the rough spots on the inside splines of the hub and then slide through the axle, since I know that the new axle splines are in fine working order. I'd like to make sure that the problem is worth remedy before I go ordering a whole new hub with wheel bearing.

 

Thanks

[lmdew]

Most likely rust build up which may have caused the damage. I've had this problem before on east coast cars. Get some good P-oil and spray it down. Clean the splines on the old axle and work it in and out from the outside. That will push all the junk out of the splines. You may want to remove the inner seal or put a rag in it to keep this junk out. You could do this with the new axle as well, just make sure you get the splines cleaned out before you install it. It takes some time, but it has worked for me.

[ra_der]

If you think the splines rust in place...

 

just wait until you try to change ball joints.

[frag]

When I replaced my front axles, i met with a similar problem. I used a fine triangular file to clean the inside of the hub splines. No problem after that.

Good luck!

[akeven]

Hey everyone, thanks for your help. We used a wire brush and finagled our way through it with no problems. It's amazing what stopping the job after everythings going to ************ and working on it the next morning can do. It can be hard to put the tools away for a day, but man it sure is reassuring to work on it after a night of steady drinking, .

 

Anyways, this afternoon after I had driven the legacy around for a while and it stopped raining, I took a look at the new axle CV boot to see how it was holding up. I completely dropped my jaw when I saw new grease everywhere. I cleaned up the area with some rags and for the life of me could not find a slit or hole in the boot after turning the wheel both all the way left and all the way right. I wonder if there was a bunch of excess grease that suddenly became liquidy again after driving around in the rain? Otherwise it looks like I could be completely re-doing this job over in a few weeks. If it is infact the remaned axle, well then I guess that's the price you pay for going cheap.

 

Anyone else ever have a remaned axle completely ************ out right after install?

[bagtagley]

 

Anyone else ever have a remaned axle completely ************ out right after install?

 

I'm 50/50 on reman'd axles. Replaced my LF last year, and it blew up on me a few days later. I just had the RF replaced about a month ago and redid it this weekend because it was shaking so badly.