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.
