A couple years ago our faint tapping turned loud - then LOUDER up in the Las
Vegas area as we were heading home to Phoenix.  We drove slowly, pulling off
every few miles to allow things to cool for a while.  Finally got into
Kingman and found a friendly mechanic at a truck stop (TA) who loaned us his
personal grease gun from the back of his truck.  

My boots were OK, but the joints on one side were dry.  I cut a small hole
in each of the two possibly offending joints (we determined the sound was
coming from the pass. side) and squeezed a few strokes worth of whatever
grease was loaded in the gun into the joint, squished it around a bit, and
hit the road.  Made it home (250 miles?) with nary a sound.  Next day I
opened them up and cleaned them out.  On inspection, they looked OK.  I
repacked them and installed new boots.  Still OK to this day.

Karl Wolz

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
> Robert Keezer
> Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2006 6:18 AM
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject: Bad CV Joint Turns Vanagon back home
> 
> A bad CV turned me and a friend back home last
> night on our way to kayak on the Hood Canal.
> 
> The CV boot was rotten and it tore, throwing the
> grease out from the outer-right cv.
> 
> We decided to return home about 35 miles out, and
> stashed the trailer behind some buildings and hid
> it with wood pallets, to take the extra load off.
> I did'nt want to be towing it if I needed to call
> a tow truck.
> 
> Now out this cold summer morning (51 F BRRRR) to
> remove the axle and change the CV. I have one
> tube of grease.
> The boot is cracked and rotten- I guess it can
> happen when you least expect it.
> 
> Now I know what the faint tapping sound was.
> It turned into a loud knocking sound.
> At least we made it home, stopping to let the
> joint cool and found also stopping to go in
> reverse gave several miles of quiet.
> 
> Robert
> 
> 1982 Westfalia
> 
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