T5 nearside drive shaft play

[Gilbeynut]

Good afternoon all.

Hopefully this should be a simple question for those in the know. Since completing a long journey on Thursday, I can hear a rubbing noise coming from what sounds like underneath the front nearside of the van. It's only present with the van under load i.e. it's silent when coasting with the clutch depressed. Whilst doing a general visual check of the drive shafts, in an attempt to hunt down the noise, I happened to note that there was a lot of lateral play in the nearside drive shaft i.e. movement of the shaft in and out of the gearbox. There is none in the offside drive shaft. Am I right in assuming there should be none, and hence I have a CV joint/Drive Shaft that needs replacing? It's a 2004 1.9 (AXB) T30 with a 5-speed manual. Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[DXX]

Aren’t the T5 driveshafts a known weakness, I remember chatting with some T5 owners about spline failures?

 

[Gilbeynut]

I've seen lots of references to issues with the splines, but I would have thought these would manifest themselves in play when trying to twist the driveshafts. On my van there only appears to be lateral play, not rotational.

 

[n10n]

Just couple of general comments, don't know if lateral play is normal or not

* Check the hub nut is tight
* Put the front on axle stands, gear on, then easy to test for rotational play by turning the wheels back and forth
* Once on stands, also try to feel / listen if it could be a bearing issue
* This video shows some of the structure, could perhaps give tips:

I think for some reason it's usually offside drive shafts that fail in T5 - most references I've seen talk about offside and that's what went in mine.

 

[gavinda12]

I also had issues on both my T5s. Always offside. Where the little stub shaft meets the actual driveshaft they wear the teeth. Excuse the none Technical response!

 

[DXX]

AXB is the 105ps / 5 speed box.
Are you sure the axial play isn’t in the gearbox? The 5 speed box isn’t the most reliable.

slack in gearbox advice please

www.vwt4forum.co.uk

 

[DXX]

Just couple of general comments, don't know if lateral play is normal or not

* Check the hub nut is tight
* Put the front on axle stands, gear on, then easy to test for rotational play by turning the wheels back and forth
* Once on stands, also try to feel / listen if it could be a bearing issue
* This video shows some of the structure, could perhaps give tips:

I think for some reason it's usually offside drive shafts that fail in T5 - most references I've seen talk about offside and that's what went in mine.

The bloke in the video isn’t overly concerned about finding a safety critical nut loose on his van!
”I’ll tighten it up”. Needs to be stripped and inspected, has been running with a loose wheel bearing for how long?
There’s some good and bad YouTube content, this falls into the later.

 

[n10n]

There some good and bad YouTube content, this falls into the later.

Agree, not professional in any way.

Nearside and offside are apparently bit different in T5 and this showed the guy fooling around quite a bit with nearside, included it just as a source to see what’s there and maybe give ideas what lateral play could be traced to.