After my trip to Spa last week was blitted by a failed driveshaft 2 days before the trip (nearside outboard), I am getting slightly annoyed by the failure.
I know people have referred to them as ‘a consumable’ item, and I know the car is 90% track orientated, but surely their must be a better solution.
The car was converted by Phoenix and hence I have always used their driveshafts if that makes any difference?
With all the honda development over the years is their now such thing as a fit and forget solution?
I dont know what joints/shafts Phoenix use but yes there is a fit and almost forget solution. However they will never be a fit and forget item in reality.
Problem is there are a number of reasons for failure:-
Bad quality joints
Wrong joints
Wrong grease
Too much heat from Exhaust manifold
Wrong length shafts
Wrong clips
Wrong boots
Poor assembly
Wrong position of engine to Subframe
Get all the above right and they last not too bad.
Best bet is have a talk with MSC, Hoffmans or Essex Motorsport and see if they will replace them.
In the hope of not opening a huge can of worms here, I think a lot of it is to do with the position of the engine and the angle of the drive shafts.
In my opinion some of the conversions put the engine to far forward resulting in the shafts being at too much of an extreme angle. Couple this with the engine maybe moving around too much due to soft mounts and some of the points Andy has raised and there you go.
A lot of the race guys and heavy track day users do seem to go for a huge amount of time between failures and I know some have said they have never had a failure, so there is a correct combination of bits out there that seems to do the job.
I’m going for the link up fitted driveshafts as I’m told they are slightly longer than the phoenix ones.
It appears from searching on here and seloc that this is, as Sean said ‘a can of worms’ subject with a lot of opinions going back over the years, and I certainly do not want to start a bun fit (hence not posting on seloc ). I obviously have an issue, and hopefully the different shafts and fitting technique will resolve it. I will also check the mounts for play.
don�t worry your problem is already solved.
we had the same problem and broke 5 sets of driveshafts
The problem is
a) engine Position → wrong driveshaft angle
b) engine mounts (we use 6 mounts!)
c) grease inside the joints
Call Wayne from Essex Motorsport for their driveshafts. Probably he can help yo with engine position and engine mounts too. We use engine mounts from jubu-racing in Austria - high quality ally but more expansive than the steel ones from UK.
Chris from Hofamns can help you too. He has a lot of knowledge and experience with Honda-Conversions.
Regards
Peter
After my trip to Spa last week was blitted by a failed driveshaft 2 days before the trip (nearside outboard), I am getting slightly annoyed by the number of times I am having driveshaft failure - 5 times in 3 years.
That is nothing, I have had quite a few more than that !!
I have changed and used all different engine mounts, bought all existing driveshafts and still had troubles !
I ended up having driveshafts done on purpose, based on lenghts, torsion rate, resistance, angle, etc…
No problems since except that after 5 years of troubles, I sold the car and hope the new owner will have no problems…
Back to some news: the new owner broke the drive shafts twice: once on the gearbox side, once on the wheel side always on left side !
Any “new” undestructible solution is arising from you guys in UK ? We are so lost in the wold in France facing these problems
A big thing that most peeps miss, is running them in. A tight CV joint will fail quickly if given death from the outset. Also when servicing replace in the same position in the cup for the tripode joint.
Thanks Middo, will try this.
Pete757, no way, fed up of beign eaten by those “big bertha” 911 GT3s !!!
Any other solution arising ?
I am trying to get in touch with Martyn Tinker but the email I’ve got is not working anymore ([email protected]) Any email or phone number to get in touch please ?
