[s-cars] Creeeeak, creeeeeak, creeeeeeak -Tired of those noisy rear link joints?

[Kirby Smith]

Wow Fred, that's a gigantic grease fitting.  I'm certain I've seen
significantly smaller ones.

kirby



Fred Munro wrote:
> 
> Igor;
> 
> The main section of the outer heim joint casing is 20mm wide and 11mm thick.
> The smallest grease fittings I have takes an 11mm diameter hole by about 10
> mm deep. I wasn't comfortable drilling that much out of the joint case - I
> don't know how much stress that joint is under.
> 
> I love greasable bushings - I've never had a bushing with a grease fitting
> on it wear out. On the other hand, "sealed for life" bushings seem to have a
> short life :o)
> 
> Fred
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Igor Kessel [mailto:kbattpo at verizon.net]
> Sent: April 4, 2004 11:07 AM
> To: Fred Munro
> Cc: s-car-list at audifans.com
> Subject: Re: [s-cars] Creeeeak, creeeeeak, creeeeeeak -Tired of those
> noisy rear link joints?
> 
> Fred Munro wrote:
> 
> >       Well, after 6 months one of my newly replaced rear upper link outer heim
> > joints started singing that old familiar tune. My past approach was to
> stick
> > a grease needle through the seal and pump it full of grease. This works,
> but
> > eventually the seals are full of needle holes. This time I decided on a
> > different approach.
> >       The ideal fix would be to drill the outer joint for a grease fitting, but
> > there is not a lot of metal there and I've been kind of leery about
> drilling
> > a hole large enough to take even a small grease fitting in case it
> weakened
> > the joint. I took a micrometer to my grease needle and picked a drill
> 0.002"
> > smaller (No.51 in my case). I drilled a hole through the top of the
> joint's
> > outer housing and then drilled a larger hole just long enough to make a
> > couple threads for a (very short) stainless 6-32 machine screw to seal the
> > hole.
> >       Inserted the needle, pumped grease until it came out of the seals, and
> > inserted the sealing screw to keep the grease from coming back out of the
> > hole. Ah, blessed silence. Wait, what's that pool of oil under the car -
> > arghh, the left side diff seal is leaking.....
> >       Did discover a few things about these joints. The OEM joint has a heavy
> > plastic insert between the inner bushing and the outer joint case. The
> > cheaper aftermarket replacements I bought are metal on metal - no plastic
> > insert. Maybe that's why they started squeaking in 6 months and it took
> the
> > OEM joints 9 years. Maybe there is a reason the OEM joints are more
> > expensive....
> 
> Fred, how deep was the metal cap of the join?
> 
> I have just done the same exact thing with the notoriously squeaky lower
> control arms in my wife's A4. I used the M6x1mm, 90° grease fittings
> from McMaster (1105K76). They come in a package of 10.
> 
> The cap thickness in one arm was 6.5mm, in the other was 7.5mm. The
> grease fitting itself was 6.5mm long so in the first case I used a small
> metal washer. I also put the Red Loctite on hate thread. It's the one
> that is permanent.
> 
> So far so good. Sure beats replacing 4 lower arms at $300/ea and doing
> the alignment after that.
> 
> FYI folks, Pep Boys sells the 90° grease fittings with the 0.25" thread.
> I am not sure about the pitch, but given the choice I would recommend
> the fine pitch.
> I didn't buy those and bought the metric ones from McMaster instead
> because I hardly have any non-metric tools in my garage, much less taps
> and dies.
> 
> --
> Igor Kessel
> two turbo quattros in the stable,
> the third one is in the works
> 
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