I've got a 98 V70XC and I went to leave work today and when I put it into reverse and gave it gas it seemed like it didn't engage right away. Then when it did it was not right, the car seemed like it was missing. I parked (on an incline) to pop the hood and went to get out and realized it was slowly rolling downhill despite being in Park! I checked the tranny fluid, it looked fine. I then drove it around the parking lot some more and heard popping noises coming from under the car. I then put it in Park, put in reverse and it made a big clunk noise. Now I'm sitting here waiting for a tow home because I don't want to drive home and make it worse, but I'm wondering what I'm looking at as far as repairs go?

 

Luckily it looks like it's the driver's side CV joint that is busted. It's strange because the boot looked fine the last time I had the wheel off, but now it's split and the joint is broken. Hopefully that's the only thing that's wrong

 

I replaced the axle yesterday and it was really odd, the shaft had come completely out of the CV joint at the wheel. I am not sure how that happened? The grease inside was fine (it should have been as the boot always looked good) and I didn't see any broken bits of metal, or even any metal shavings inside the joint. Getting the new axle in was a pain. The clip that holds the shaft into the transmission was too large and was preventing it from going in the whole way. I think this must be a common problem, as I was looking at how to vids and at least one said it was okay if the shaft moves back and forth a bit, but it's not fully seated if it does this. I had to swap the clip with the old axle in order to get it to go in the whole way. Also in reading the reviews for the axle I bought, the people were complaining about the axle nut being smaller on the new axle. That smaller nut is to put partially on the end so you can beat the axle in with a sledge and not damage the threads, you need to reuse the heavy duty nut from the old axle.