Hi All, I am in the middle of re-greasing the CV joints and replacing the boots. Just wondering, if someone can give me some insight before I start to pry off the cover on the outer (wheel side) CV joint, is this going to reveal a snap ring (Seeger clip) or some other mechanism To allow me to disassemble it enough to clean and degrease the outer CV joint? 1995 F355 B Thanks in advance! Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
A little bump to the thread I’ve understood that there is a internal snap ring that just requires a sharp impact to unseat it self, but the gold colored flange that the boot clamps to will need to come off as well, and it looks to me that this is quite permanently attached. No luck trying to pry it off and looks l Ike I would be more likely to deform it if I tried to bang it off by yanking on the shaft. Does anyone have tip on how to disassemble this outer joint? Or is it more common to just throw some more grease inside and only replace the boot? thanks in advance!
When I did mine I cleaned the heck out of it with multiple shop rags (you do NOT want to use break cleaner as trace amounts of it which will be left behind will break down the grease and ruin the cv joint). I was advised the outer ones are a major PITA- I can't remember exactly why. I am super OCD and would want to clean them all out but you can get them pretty darn clean without having to disassemble them. Here is one of my inner ones. You can get them damn clean without having to disassemble them. I realize on the outer ones you will still be leaving one side with old grease in it. Just clean them as best as you can. Also since you have a '95 355 please be aware that there are two different outer CV boots for a 355. Mine is an early '95 and the outer boots are from a TR or 348 (I think). The later boots wont fit. So if you have to stretch it hard to get it on, you have the later boot and its not going to work with your CV joint. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Some CV joints have a square cross-section circlip inside which has to be spread out first with a small screwdriver or something (they won't pop-out like the round spring-clips). Example of a Saab CV joint: Image Unavailable, Please Login
It looks similar to the M3 ones i have done, an with those you carefully peel the metal can of the outer joint slide put of the way, then rotate the inner section out till on ball bearing drops then the whole lot comes out same as the inner CV
Thanks for the replies, and especially the tip about the size of the early outer (wheel side) boots, I measured mine and you are correct (I also have an early '95), they are about 3mm larger in diameter than the boots that came with the repair kit. So I ordered part number 95860404 from Ricambi America - gosh I hope these are the right ones: they are for the 348, TR, as well as a whole slug of other earlier Ferraris, but NOT for the 355 - which in this case, is good. I also checked at the Ferrari dealer and there is no note of the boot sizes being larger on early models, just that the part number is superseded, so indeed that was a valuable tip. In the meantime while I wait for the boots to arrive, I can ponder the disassembly of the wheel side joint. Miro, I was not able to see any kind of obvious opening or access to a clip from the front (as per your Saab reference), in fact i looks just like the circlip side of CV joint on the diff side, without the circlip. Will have a closer look again, in case I missed anything. For the differential side, I've now disassembled them twice (so total of 4 CV joints) over the past 2 weeks. I'm getting really fast at this...
Seems that the type of circlip shown on the Saab document was rarely used (I couldn't see any either on my 1998 Saab 9-5 outer CV joints when replacing the grease and the boots so I did not separate them). Perhaps this method will work?
... and that's exactly why we provide the measurements of the early-style boot on our website: https://www.ricambiamerica.com/95860404-bellows.html
