We ended our Miata’s first race early, loading the car on its trailer with a broken CV joint and a missing transmission. (It’s a long story.) Now home, it was time to put the car back together and return to the track.
Let’s get to work.
We ended our Miata’s first race early, loading the car on its trailer with a broken CV joint and a missing transmission. (It’s a long story.) Now home, it was time to put the car back together and return to the track.
Let’s get to work.
Nice trick with the spray can straw.
Thank you for sharing it.
One thing I learned from owning a car with rear CV axles for the first time is that you don't get as much warning before failure as you would from a FWD car, where you might expect to hear a ton of clicks while making tight turns long before anything actually breaks. Because the joints are running relatively straight and stable angles all the time, a single click when going between accel and decel is not only the first sign of trouble noticeable to the driver, but also the last - at that point the joint is on its last legs and could even blow up while just cruising on a highway...theoretically.
Interesting, thanks for the followup. I've been running my V8R axles on track for years without grease slinging or venting straws. The Driveshaft Shop can be a little...variable...in their production, I wonder if your originals were just poorly assembled.
Also, every time you post a picture of the Lightning with the frunk open I keep thinking it's broken down :)
I've done the straw trick on FWD race cars with good results as well. I used this stuff, which you can usually find at local hobby stores. A little more peace of mind vs. the plastic straw, don't have to worry it getting soft and closing up at high temperatures.
https://ksmetals.com/collections/12-long-round-aluminum-tubing
https://ksmetals.com/collections/12-long-round-brass-tube
Also, aftermarket soft rubber CV boots are garbage compared to the harder thermoplastic OEM style ones. They turn into balloons at high speeds. Our solution was to tie a string around each rib in the boot (and put a little dot of super glue on the knot for security). That keeps the boot from expanding and rubbing or tearing on anything.
I did the vent straw trick on our fwd endurance car for a bit,I simply stopped clamping the inner end.
Also can't pull the outer end off if it wasn't quite right.
Since I pulled,cleaned and repacked after every race weekend it also saved running out of straws :).
On my IT race car I used to not install the smaller clamp that went around the halfshaft. This worked fine at every track I ran until I went to Road America. The sustained high speeds I saw there caused the rubber boot to balloon and sling grease out of the CV. Installing a zip tie fixed the problem.
In reply to jimbbski :
In our case we use redline grease,after 16 hrs on track its all still in the joint no chance of it coming out the small end.
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