Shafted

by Darren on Sep.16, 2013, under Seat

For a while I’ve been trying to get a pair of driveshafts made up – I sent the pair from the car (the one that broke on Sunseeker 2012, and the other one that was fitted at the time) to DRD Autograss to get them made up, but they eventually went quiet on me, not replying to any contact with them, which is a pain as I spent ages chasing them, and also sent them a pair of shafts and joints to ensure everything was made up accurately…. so, best avoided then; after a year of excuses and so on, just silence.

Moving on… with everything in the car, it was time to put the shafts and front suspension back in, so I grabbed the last pair of spares from the car’s spares package and tried them for size. The nearside shaft fitted without issue – about 15mm of plunge at full suspension droop, so everything looked great.

The offside was a different story – it wasn’t possible to move the driveshaft in at all , and indeed it was under some pressure with the suspension fully dropped, which is definitely not right – as the suspension is compressed, the driveshaft length decreases, so this would clearly not work, putting (at best) immense strain on the joints and the diff. So clearly the shaft I had quickly fitted to get the car home after the Sunseeker wasn’t right…. but what was?

A morning spent on the Internet scouring forums found some clues – fortunately a lot of people have fitted VW engines into the “wrong” cars, and as an aid to this people have measured the shaft lengths. Stripping the shaft down to just the bare shaft showed that it was about 20mm too long! The problem with ordering another one, though, was that parts manufacturers only give “fitted” lengths, not bare shaft ones, but some measuring up showed that the “right” shaft for the car was the “right” shaft for the car, so I bit the bullet and ordered one complete. It arrived the next day and…fitted perfectly! Same plunge as the other side, so the rest of it was just a case of bolting everything into place. The short shaft was removed and had both inner and outer joint replaced, so it’s all good as new: