Had a big weekend of motorsport up north with a event at Harewood and Sprint at Croft - 3rd in class at Harewood and 1st in class at Croft 2 tenths off the class record on my first visit to both courses - so a good weekend fropm that perspective. The downsides are I caught the flu on Sun evening and I broke something at the rear of the car.

On the way back from Croft on the M1 I could feel a roughness from the rear of the car and the car shook on some bends and under hard acceleration. A bit further on there was a definite noise (mix of soft clunking and loud clicking) that steadily got worse. If I were to make a guess I'd say it came more from the RHS but I can't be certain. It got really bad at one point enough for me to consider pulling over and calling recovery (and it takes a lot for me to halt a journey once I've started it). However, as I slowed to 60 and lower it improved, to the point where I was on the M3 I thought I'd pick up speed to 70 see if it would come back. Strangely it didn't, it almost felt normal just with a slight roughness and no additional noise (lots of drivetrain noise on my car anyway).

Any idea what it might be? I'm thinking driveshafts but it may also be the diff. But I'm confused as to why the car shook in faster corners on the motorway?

I've got a spare diff (standard not the usual 4.9 plate diff), anyone got any driveshafts? Any other suggestions?

Cheers,
Matt

 

Get under it and have a look...

maybe one of the diff to driveshaft joints?

 

IIRC PaperLawyer had some wear in the cv joint buckets from the car being lowered without driveshaft spacers that resulted in a vibration under power and in right hand bends which felt like a wheel was out of balance.

Your symptoms sound similar.

 

Matt's aware that Peter was considering a half shaft swop out - that would be my first port of call as it's possible to swop them out (just!) without popping ball joints etc. Put in some drive shaft spacers if the car doesn't already have them.

EDIT: the photo of the damage I found:

 

 

Thanks guys! When I'm feeling a better I'll have a poke around under the car to see what I can see. Sounds like driveshafts are the first thing to look at but I'll also drain the diff oil to see if there is any bits of metal in there.

Anyone used these uprated shafts from TDi - http://www.tdi-north.com/products/honda/s2...to%20600bhp.htm
(They also have 1000hp versions!)

I'll hunt around for a how-to on changing driveshafts. Can it be done without upsetting the geometry? (never done this job before).

Edit: Craig - totally forgot Peter was considering a half shaft swap. according to his spec sheet it has spoon shafts in there and I can see the J's spacers.

Matt

 

It shouldn't affect the geometry as you don't adjust/undo the geo adjusters, not do you lengthen/shorten/change the angle of anything when you swop out the buckets. It is pretty straightforward. You may have to undo a wishbone to give you some room to play with - check out this thread:

http://forums.s2kca.com/showthread.php?t=21680&page=2

I didn't realise Peter had bought some Spoon half shafts - typical Peter!

 

Got a new knuckle and driveshaft and put them on tonight (just in time for the weekends events down in Devon!).

The eand of the drive shaft sheared off at the threaded section whyen I went to unbolt it earlier in the week (looked like fatigue failure). The wheel bearing was properly fubar'd!

Test drive was nice and quiet, must have had a lot of clunking from the hub before. It's still a temp fix as this knuckle doesn't have the roll centre adjuster on it so need to fix up the old hub and put it back on. And get a new outboard cv joint put on the spoon drive shaft. And then I'm sure something else will need doing.

Matt