the dreaded Chinese Puzzle

[JanDebL at aol.com]

A VW mechanic friend of mine, who went to an official VW school, told me the 
Germans who taught the classes truly believed that once a CV had been driven 
for any amount of time, it could only be reassembled in the original 
configuration including each ball in its corresponding original track. ( 
Remember these are the same people that list in their repair manual - 3 
"oversize" piston / cylinder repair sizes within a tolerance of 1 / 1000 of 
an inch.)  Since that conversation I have always marked each joint before 
disassembly so I will have the correct orientation between the inner & outer 
races and the cage.  I then take an old egg carton and keep track of each 
ball until it is reassembled.  This all sounds pretty anal but you have keep 
the ball from rolling off the bench anyhow and it only takes a couple of 
seconds with a dremel tool to put a light marking on each race.  I'm sure 
that when these steps aren't followed, the components will just "wear 
themselves in" again as that is the way most people do it and I don't see 
many problems.
For a while, Porsche was having major problems with their CV joints on the 
endurance race circuit.  Apparently the tight tolerances became even tighter 
during the long races causing seized joints and in several cases loss of 
control of the car.  Some of the American shops solved the problem by running 
the joints on their 911s with wider tolerances.  The factory was slow to 
acknowledge the apparent solution. 
Jan Lahtonen
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