Rogue Recon Shafts

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

Sadly GKN shafts seem to be increasingly hard to get, so I've had to resort to other brand recon shafts recently a few times. Now some (namely "AMK") have been OK.

 

In prep for a trip to a certain one way toll road in Germany, I bought a pair of shafts from GSF. On opening the boxes was pleasantly suprised to see not recon, but what looked to be brand new shafts, result.

 

Anyway, fitted said shafts to the car, did a few gentle road miles no problem.

 

On arriving at the aforementioned toll road I found that on cornering right, with the NSF suspension compressing, all of a sudden there was a horrible clunking noise and feel through the steering. The car never did this before so I thought it has to be a problem with the new short shaft.

 

Luckily had borrowed some emergency spares so quickly swapped it over one morning. Lo and behold this sorted the problem and I went on to do 16 laps.

 

Anyway, moving on a month or so tonight I got round to doing some investigation.

 

As I've a lathe this is the ideal place to be able to compress the shafts up and get an accurate measurement.

 

So I dug out my selection of various shafts here is what I found. All measurements taken from the shoulder where the inner joint steps up to the seal diameter, to the shoulder on the outer CV that sits against the wheel bearing.

 

1) Old shaft from track car - 1.9 205 - 420mm

2) Old shaft from customers 1.9 205 road car - 420mm

3) Odd shaft origin unknown - 430mm

4) Emergency spare shaft for turbo car - origin unknown - marked up as 309 GTI - 430mm

5) New shaft from GSF as above - 428mm

 

I guess I don;t need to type a lot more, other than to say I've discovered I've a spare 309 short shaft (no 3, result) and that the GSF shaft will be going back there in the next couple of days.

[Anthony 1,003]

I can't say that I'm particularly surprised, given the random shafts that people have been known to give back as exchanges - I'm sure that some of these are overhauled and then packaged back up without being measured, so some poor unsuspecting sod gets shafted (sorry, I couldn't resist that terrible pun)

[welshpug 1,657]

sounds like a 309 shaft with a squashed inner cv spring! come across a few instances of this happening recently, though never got as far as actually measutring the shafts.

 

one was too long for a 309 wishbone infact, though did bolt up, so not sure what that could have been as any other shaft would be significantly longer!

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

Thinking about it, it could well be, as the action of the knocking/bottoming out could quite well have squashed up the spring. In any case it is going back.

[Alastairh 47]

I once bought a "309 GTI" shaft. It was 309 length but had different shaped splines and a smaller thread. It went back, but after talking to people i suspect it was off a early 309 of some sort.

 

Al

[Miles 331 1 Cars]

Tell me about it, The thing I;ve never worked out is how a shaft could be too short for a 205 as you cannot get any narrower than that

[MerlinGTI 3]

Why are GKN jobbies getting hard to get? They gone under or something? Sad news if they have, other shafts Ive had (oo err!) have been very poor quality indeed.

Edited September 5, 2010 by MerlinGTI

[GLPoomobile 958]

I'm pretty sure the long shaft on mine is dead. That was a 309 item from GSF a couple of years ago, which IIRC was GKN. If it had only just failed now I wouldn't be so upset, but I'm pretty sure the problem started not long after it was fitted and had covered virtually no mileage at that point. Even up until recently I'd only covered perhaps just over 1000 miles of very unstressed mileage on it.

[Liquid_106 97 1 Cars]

Rather than buying a full shaft, is it possible to just purchase the CV joints so you can rebuild the shaft? I know on XE Novas ( ) they require a selection of parts (Nova outer, Cav inner, GTE shafts etc) for the shafts, you can get the CVs separately, so if you blow one, usually the outer, you can just swap that CV without pulling the shaft and loosing the contents of the gear box.

[welshpug 1,657]

only on the 1.9 and 309 gti

[Liquid_106 97 1 Cars]

only on the 1.9 and 309 gti

Do you have any links welshpug or are the a GSF/motorfactor available part?

 

I was going to see if commercial-propshafts did them, but if you know of somewhere that defo does them, that would be great!

 

cheers

[welshpug 1,657]

most motorfactors do them, never bought one specifically for them but have for the 405 which uses a larger spline on the end of the shaft into the CV.

 

MOtaquip's Ecat redirects to AMK Automotive for driveshafts and steering racks.

 

TDL9439R is for standard non abs shafts.

 

http://www.elcome.co.uk/xplorerlite/AMK/In...p;sFromApps=yes

 

about £35 iirc, come with a boot and clips, and the snap ring

 

main problem is that the inner joint is not available separately, and often enough if the outer joint is worn so is the inner joint.

[Tom Fenton 1,542]

Not all 1900 shafts have the removable cv, I've come across a few now that are integral with the shaft as per the 1600 shafts.