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.
[What you learn from your first time racing a new car]
A broken axle …
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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