CV Joint -- Sources / Internal Parts ?

[62S-R-S]

A broken CV boot is a hassle if things dry out to then impact the joint. As I took the outer one apart, some mild pitting was noticed, while the bearing balls took the worst of it. A 928 joint, but GKN is known to feature a large selection of CV parts - that should cross the spectrum of 911, 944, 924. Searching revealed outfits selling 'boot kits' or 'axle shafts' and not the CV itself, and no internal parts..

Whoever supplies the axle, must have a shop or source for the pinion (star) gear that is central to the joint...whatever the correct term is for it.

Giving up on new, I chose to reverse the pinion, and cage in order to create a new wear pattern. It's quiet for now. Others recommend swapping axle shafts left to right, again with the idea to take wear off of existing surfaces for an alternate pattern.

UK, AUS, Europe ? > http://gkn.com/en/our-divisions/gkn-...olutions/cvjs/

[chris_seven]

Complete Lobro joints are relatively easy to find but some of the early joints are now obsolete.

The 94mm OD SWB Joint is NLA and the only replacement part needs new shafts as the inner race of the only joints available have 33 splines and also a revised ball cage and housing.

It may be possible to find a specialist to re-manufacture the inner race but the cost would be very high.

These early joints commonly show wear to all three main components so replacement is the best plan.

GKN/Lobro/Spidan have never sold individual parts only complete joints.

The 930 (108mm OD) Joint and the 934 (128mm OD) Joints are used on a large number of off road buggies and there are several manufacturers of uprated inner races, ball cages and housings but the cost of these parts are generally quite high and significantly more expensive than buying new stock joints.

Finding the individual ball bearings is straightforward as they are generally available from bearing suppliers.

I think you can use a 930 joint on a 928 as the PCD is 94mm, spline count is 28 and width is 32mm bit GKN motorsport also make this joint with a 40mm width.

Pelican have the 928 joints at $130 but 930 joints can be found at about $60.

100mm OD joints used on SCs are also readily available

[62S-R-S]

Thx...I didn't hear one remark from anyone offering to sell a CV Joint, but will pursue it further..

Complete Lobro joints are relatively easy to find but some of the early joints are now obsolete.

The 94mm OD SWB Joint is NLA and the only replacement part needs new shafts as the inner race of the only joints available have 33 splines and also a revised ball cage and housing.

It may be possible to find a specialist to re-manufacture the inner race but the cost would be very high.

That GKN builds thousands of CV joint designs of differing spec, but obstacles are high for a batch of '100' SWB joints of correct spline. Demand should be higher than the 930, but not sure.

[chris_seven]

Sadly the future of GKN has become very uncertain as they have just been bought by a venture capital Company (Melrose) and will be broken up and effectively will cease to exist so the chaos that will result may take a couple of years to stabilise.

GKN currently only manufacture 24 different designs of Lobro Joint and trying to discuss any custom manufacture with them is virtually impossible. I would agree that the range of the typical 'outer joint' used on FWD cars is huge but inappropriate.

The 'Motorsport' Division is around 20 miles from our premises and i have been trying to discuss making inner races for the last 10 years without success. I have also asked them to quote for manufacturing 'Rolled spline' driveshafts which they advertise in their catalogue, but never managed to obtain a price or an MOQ.

There are several 'Chinese' manuacturers but I wouldn't follow this path as some of the cheap joints I have seen used on old Golfs (Rabbit ?) only seem to last a few weeks.

There is a company called AIKOKU ALPHA in Japan who manufacture inner races - around 3 Million a month which is about 20% of GKN's output - but again they are difficult to contact.

Inner races are typically made by a multi-stage cold-forming process as this eliminates the need for precision grinding and produces a very fatigue resistant component. Tolerance are typically 10-20 microns

I imagine that the old SWB design joint was withdrawn when the tooling reached it's end of life and the demand didn't justify re-investment.

The costs of scanning a good joint and then re-manufacturing the inner inner race would be significant. It may be possible to make an inner race using a 5 axis machine and the REM treating to avoid the need for grinding but it is also likely that a custom broach would be needed and we have found it more cost effective to buy used 1302S drive shafts which are only a few millimeters longer then the SWB driveshaft and then fit them with a 33 spline deep plunge CV used on a VW/Audi and readily available for $50.00 each.

Fortin Racing make Inner Races for 934 CV's and they use 300M Steel, heat treat and REM finish but these parts sell for around $200 each but I am sure that they would quote for an alternative part.

I think it could cost between $5000-$10000 to make 100 inner races. We would then replace this component and use the VW/Audi housing/ball cage and we don't believe we would easily recover the investment as the final cost would make each joint very expensive,.

I think it would be less expensive to make new shafts which is really frustrating.

[62S-R-S]

A Berlitz course in Japanese may be useful or even required, if these folks capture the whole market. Fairly impressive group..


aikoku.co.jp/en/cf/products/