Just got back from putting another 3,000 miles on my '01 V70 T5 (up to 222,000 now). The car did a great job, but I noticed a slight shake in the front end (and thinking back, an occasional, but intermittent shake before). A quick search on this forum and it looks like it's almost certainly an axle. For expediency's sake, I ordered a pair of Empi (Empire) axles from Ebay while I was on the road so they'd be waiting when I get home. $138 for a pair, delivered, and they're Empi axles (I know they're still Chinese, but I've had good luck with them before).

2 New DTA Front CV Axles L R with Warranty V70 S60 Free Shipping VO2037A 2038A | eBay

With any luck, a couple hours from now I'll have an even better road trip car.

One interesting thing I noticed was that the shake was worse when it was cool out. As we drove back into Arizona (and near-100 degree heat) the shake all but disappeared. I guess that's because of the tolerances "tightening up" in the heat as the metal in the axles expands with the heat, but it might help someone diagnose a bad axle in the future.

 

Well, THAT isn't how it was supposed to go...

The GOOD news is that I clearly have a bad axle (so new axles should fix my problem).


The BAD news is that this is what I saw when I opened the box to see my new EMPI axles...



Lesson here: always open the box from an Ebay vendor before assuming you got the right part. Not a big deal in this case (five minutes to jack the car up and get the wheel off), and happily I hadn't pulled out the bad axle before opening the box. It looks like it was largely my fault - I searched on "V70 empi axles", and somehow that returned (among others) the link to those axles... I should have caught that. I have no experience with DTA axles, but have gone through other el cheapo axles (on a VW Jetta turbo) like popcorn, so I'm skeptical about the quality.

Even worse, I opened the right side (long) axle box to see what it was that I got, and was shocked to find that I could rotate the axle halves independently... it's like the inside CV joint isn't even there. That's without pulling anything apart or even handling the axle. Not a good thing.

So it looks like I'll be driving on a bad axle for a while longer, waiting for the right axles. Hopefully the Ebay vendor will fix this mess without me having to resort to Ebay's conflict resolution system (quirky at best).

Sigh...

 

both of my axle boots are split and the driver side is starting to get a bit noisy. How hard are these to change? Does one need to remove half the wheel assembly etc to even get at it or are they a quick swap? Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

It's really not a huge job to swap axles, as long as the splines coming through the hub bearings aren't frozen by rust. If they're loose, it shouldn't take more than a couple hours if you work slow to change an axle. I'm planning on swapping out both of mine tomorrow, and I've decided to go ahead and use the DTA axles - I didn't see any real horror stories online about them in a short search. I also decided to replace both front wheel bearings, which only adds around $100 to the job, and looks to be pretty simple (really only four bolts if the axle is already out). I think I was hearing a little rumbling noise on top of the bad axle vibrations, so it's a false economy to NOT replace the bearings while I'm in there.

My recollection is that all you have to do is to pull the axle bolt, pop off the lower ball joint connection, and that gives you enough room to wiggle the axle out (as I recall you also have to turn the steering wheel to one side or the other to increase the clearance). I'm probably forgetting a step or two, but I did this once in a parking lot with tools I bought from a local parts store (because the axle seal at the tranny shifted - the axle was OK at that point). I hope to have both axles and both bearings in by tomorrow morning as I'll be in the shade from my house that long - it gets toasty here in the afternoon when the sun starts beating down...

 

It's always something... ;-) I got the bad axle changed - the inner CV boot came apart when I pulled the axle (in two pieces, as a result), and I can see that the bearings are really toast - I'm surprised it didn't cause more problems driving than it did. Then after I swapped the axle and bearing, when I was tightening up the last "locking" lug bolt, the key broke... it's made with a splined insert pressed into a hex cup, and the splines gave up the ghost. Luckily it was tight enough for me to feel good about it staying on, but now I can't get the OTHER front wheel off to do the other side.

The good news is that I just drove the car a few miles, and it's now silky smooth again... probably better than when I bought it. So it's a good result as long as I don't have a flat before I can get the locking lug bolt off. I am taking the key to a welder to see if he can fix it or weld a bolt to the insert so I can take off and replace all the locking lugs. Sigh.

Also, I thought I'd add some info about how I swapped out the axle without too much grief or any chance of affecting the alignment...

1) Remove the wheel, support the car with a jackstand (call your lawyer, etc.).
2) Remove the axle bolt (used an impact wrench)
3) Remove the nut on the lower ball joint
4) Pry down the control arm until the ball joint bolt clears, then pull the hub back and out. I use a medium-size pry bar with a "hook" on one end, that happily fits into the steering bump stop. Then I use the pry bar to add leverage to the control arm.
5) Pull the axle out of the hub - if it's stuck, you can put the bolt in partially and use a hammer to try to drive it out of the hub. You should have a new bolt on the replacement axle, so there's not much to lose here).
6) Once the spline are clear, pull the axle (if it's the right axle, you'll have to go under the car to remove the inner bearing cap - another very easy job)
7) If you're replacing the bearing, remove the two large bolts holding the brake caliper on, and support the caliper with a bungee cord or similar to keep from stressing the brake line. Remember how the bump stop arm goes on (it's pretty obvious, but...). Remove the four bolts on the back, and the locating pin on the front of the brake disc. The hub bearing should come out easily, but if not just take the disc off and give the bearing a blow with a hammer on the protruding lip. Reassembly is the reverse of the above process (and is very easy).
8) Slide the new axle into place, and put on the inner bearing cap if it's the right axle. Make sure the inner bearing is fully seated against the inside of the holder it lives in.
9) It's a little fiddly, but I use a small bottle jack to lift the disc (and hub) up a few inches. Be careful because it can spin and drop down. But this gives me enough room to get the axle started in the splines, and to push the control arm down (again, using a pry bar - it might help to have someone stand on it). If you lined everything up OK, you should be able to move the pivoting ball joint bolt into the seat of the ball joint taper on the control arm. Do NOT put your finger anywhere where it can get pinched if the jack slips or anything else goes wrong. Then I just tapped the ball joint bolt toward the hole using an open end wrench on the non-threaded part of the bolt (so it didn't bugger up the threads). You'll need to wiggle the disc as it all comes together to get the axle to push through the hub bearing splines, but if it's not a rusty mess, this should happen pretty easily (you DID grease both sets of splines before reassembly, right?). Make sure that the inner CV isn't over-extended (the bellows on the boot will look all stretched and odd if it is - just rotate the disc and push in until it all goes back together).
10) Install the tapered ball joint nut, using a 6mm (?) allen wrench to keep the bolt from turning as you tighten the nut.
11) Tighten the new axle bot to spec (pretty dang tight).
12) Reinstall the wheel (NOT breaking the locking lug key)
13) Test drive
14) Smile and/or enjoy an adult celebratory beverage.

 

OK - just got the replacement locking lug key (fortunately the previous owner had saved his registration card so I was able to order another one). So this morning I got to race the sun (got the job done just as the sun came over the house but before it got to the front wheel).

This was the left axle, so I thought I'd add "the rest of the story".

Getting the axle ready to pull was just like the right side, other than not having to remove the extra bearing cap under the car. I'd read about all the grief some had gone through pulling the axle out, due to the engagement of the c-clip on the end of the axle. I just gave my axle a few good tugs (not worrying much about damaging it, since it's being replaced). I was happy when it popped right out without a fight.

Again, I replaced the wheel bearing just because it was so easy and cheap to do so with the axle already out. Five minutes of easy work.

My only glitch came when I tried to get the new axle to seat fully in the transmission - it just didn't want to go in, even with a few whacks on the end of the axle with a hammer (I didn't really hit it hard - that's not good on bearings - but it clearly wasn't interested in seating). I pulled it out, and like I'd read on other descriptions of using Chinese axles, the c-clip that comes on the axle is spread wider than the original. So I just pried the old one off the old axle, and installed it on the new axle, after squeezing it down slightly to make up for the inevitable spreading that would occur when I forced it on the new axle. That done, the new axle went right in.

This time I used a slightly different (and easier) method of reconnecting the ball joint bolt - I lowered the car onto a jack stand, and used the floor jack to lift the bottom of the hub (compressing the strut enough to get the bolt started). I was able to lean on the floor jack lever (in a vertical position) to push the hub over far enough to engage the ball joint bolt. Made it pretty easy.

And I thought I'd add that the inner joint on the old right axle was surprisingly loose - I'd noticed only the slightest shake in the front end at 75-80mph (yes, we have faster speed limits out here in the wide-open west) and thought it might be any number of things. It wasn't bad enough to get even remotely worried about, hardly even scoring as a minor annoyance. But considering how loose the inside joint was, I can only guess that the car is going to be better than ever now...

I'll feel REALLY good about the whole thing if I put the next 10,000 miles on the car without any issues with the Chinese axles. I saved the old ones, just in case there's any chance of rebuilding them if I do ever need them.

 

An update on the DTA axles. I've put 20,000 mainly road miles on the car since my first post (yes, I do some epic road trips!) and most of those miles have been with that tell-tale front end vibration that comes with bad axles. They were great for a few thousand miles, then ever so slowly started shaking the front end of the car worse and worse. It's still not catastrophic, but clearly noticeable. So, color me unimpressed with the DTA axles. I doubt I'll try to get a warranty replacement since I don't want to spend the time or effort replacing my bad DTA axles with other DTA axles that will be bad a couple months later - and I certainly don't want to have to ship the old ones back to the vendor (which would probably cost half as much as the replacements).

I'll probably spring for a pair of EMPI axles (had great luck with 'em on other cars), but would gladly accept any advice from others who have had good long-term luck with other options (Cardone remanufactured axles?).

 

I'd be tempted to get a pair of volvo originals from a nearby wreckyard instead.

 

Pierremcalpine, I agree that might make a whole lot of sense. My originals ran over 200,000 miles before they had any problems. OTOH, I recently looked at a couple pretty low-mileage XC90s, and both had torn CV boots, so be careful or you might be buying a very short-lived solution.

As an aside, the Ebay vendor I bought the DTA axles from agreed to refund half the cost of the originals in lieu of me sending them back. I think that's a reasonable solution, providing it actually happens.