fiestaphilwxm

Morning,

I'm a little lost and hoped someone may be able to help. It's a bit of a long story but here it goes.

Car: 2003 Mondeo Pre facelift
Engine: 2.0 130bhp TDCi
Gearbox: MMT6 6 Speed Manual

About 2 months ago one of the front suspension springs snapped on my 2003 mondeo mk3. I bought two springs with the intention of replacing both of them in the one night. Complications quickly appeared when replacing the faulty spring so once that one was done I left the other side for another day (bare in mind there wasn't a fault as such with the other spring, I just like to replace them in pairs).

Well in the last month or so things had gone from bad to worse with my DMF, So last week end I set upon replacing it and whilst I was at it I decided to do the remaining spring and both front wishbones for good luck. The DMF swap went well and I'm now driving the car with a silent and smooth clutch which is awesome, however I have upset the suspension/steering.

Long story short when I go full lock left I hear a knocking noise which is more like a clunk than a click and is not metallic sounding. It is proportional to the speed of the car. Having a closer look it looks like the outer section of the offside drive shaft (that is the section which connects to the intermediate shaft and the hub) isn't sitting correct which would explain the noise. There is no contact from any of the suspension components on full look, if I stop the vehicle and look there is nothing touching anything so it must be the shaft, right? I mean the noise is definitely coming from the offside hub area and is not the sound a failing wheel bearing would normally make.

The shaft appears to be sitting too far into the intermediate shaft because the inner cv boot is all squished inwards and the outer cv boot is extremely (in my opinion) stretched.

If I jack the car up and jack the suspension up so that the shaft is all level I expected to be able to pull it back out a bit but I can't. Should I be able to? I would rather not have to take the shaft out of the hub as this requires dropping the bottom ball joint which is a pig of a job, and would also risk loosing all of the fresh gearbox oil I have just put in it.

I have added some pictures for clarity, if you look closely you can see that the shaft appears to be too far into the intermediate shaft.

How can I go about fixing this, has it happened to anyone else?

P.s. the entire offside shaft was removed during the clutch replacement and I didn't notice any problems when it was off. I have also check and the hub nut is fully tightened.

Thanks, Phil.

dojj

iTrader: (3)

it seems fine, the twist appears to be the cv boot twisting when you put it back in again

the clicking though may be the actual shaft, if you've sent it past the safe limit when you put it back in again it may have cliped something and taken one of the balls with it

mind you, on mine, the annoying click eventually tutned out to be the little metal clip that goes onto the bottom ball joint that was catching the cv boot clip an that was soon sorted

dojj

iTrader: (3)

also, now i think about it, did you let any of the springs out when you pulled the shaft?

fiestaphilwxm

Hi Dojj,

It is definitely more than just superficial on mine unfortunately: I have just reversed on full lock and it felt/sounded like I had hit a curb.

I could well have done that when I was man handling the shaft into the hub, is there anyway to check without removing the shaft completely?

What do you mean by let any of the springs out? When I was pulling the shaft out of the hub and when I was putting it back in; the hub was connected to the strut which still had the spring on it and was loosely bolted into the turret from the top 3 bolts.

Thanks for you help

dojj

iTrader: (3)

when you pulled the shaft, was it still attached to the hub or did it pop from the hub as well as the gearbox?

the other option of diagnoses, based on this, is that it may have popped out of the hub side which hasn't seated properly again and this is what's caused it to be pushed further into the gearbox side

is that on the side with the intermediate shaft? because there should be a secondary shaft running along the back of the engine

there are a lot of variables though so it may require a full strip down

one more thing i've just thought of, did you change the top mount when you changed the springs? because mine was fubar when my spring broke and the bearings were all over the plce and it sounded horendous

daviddunlop83

iTrader: (7)

Did you align the subframe properly again?

fiestaphilwxm

It popped out from the hub after a bit of persuasion from a hammer, and it fell out of the box. Yes that is the side with the secondary shaft. The top mounts wern't changed but I have never had a problem with them and they did and still do sound smooth.

Yup, a have the specific ford sub frame alignment pins to do it properly.

dojj

iTrader: (3)

It shouldn't have come out of the hub side at all, only the other side

Which makes me think the locking clip hasn't gone in all the way which means the shaft isn't seated properly in the outer cv which has forced it further in

I'd be taking it apart from the outer cv boot to have a good look before doing anything else at this time

fiestaphilwxm

I think you might have misunderstood. The entire shaft including intermediate shaft and cv joint was removed as one piece, as you would do if you were replacing a wheel bearing.

I took the shaft apart last night and all of the ball bearings are seated nice, there is plenty of cv grease, and the shaft is seated into the cv joint as far as it can go. After rebuilding I took it out for a drive and it sounds better, a lot better, but there is still a slight knock on absolute full lock left.