SM IE: Replacement of a drive shaft, as a try

20 August 2007 | Mechanical, SM IE

By the summer of 2007, I frequently use the car, I drove about 2500 km from May to August, but I still have a very bad noise coming from the front of the car. I think about 3 possible causes: the anti-roll bar, a drive shaft of a ball pin.

I begin by greasing everything I can around the front axle, the anti-roll bar for example. It doesn’t fix the problem. During this greasing operation, I discover that the rubber sleeves supposed to keep the grease of each ball pin are damaged, so I guess that ball pins could be the cause of my noise, it’s logical. But I can’t replace the ball pins myself because special tools are required.

While waiting that my mechanic is available one day to change the ball pins and adjust the valves, I decide to try fixing my noise problem by replacing a drive shaft to see if, by chance, the noise could be caused by a damaged drive shaft, and because I can do it myself. So I’m going to replace the left drive shaft by one belonging to my other SM.

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I work in the street, because it’s flat (my driveway is not)

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Here the damaged rubber sleeve of the upper ball pin

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I begin by turning upside down the dust cover (which has been repaired some day)

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On the gearbox side, I loosen the drive housing, that’s not easy because there is not so much space

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Then I pull out the drive shaft

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Here is the empty pivot

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And here is the drive shaft

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I clean and put some grease in the drive housing and I put it back with its balls but with a drive shaft of my other SM

Operation’s result: no change, this damn noise is still there. I was pretty confident that it will be the case, but this test was not totally useless. I also put so much grease in the drive shaft that when driving the car again, grease went all around the wheel arch and into the rim. Congratulations 😉

So the noise is certainly caused by damaged upper ball pins, whose rubber sleeves are cut. So I have to wait for my mechanic’s willing or I can try to find a solution to replace the ball pins myself. I’m waiting for more than 2 months now.