Possible buggered gearbox?

ins0mn1ac · 20 Nov 2013 at 16:01

Just lately I had to replace the nearside driveshaft due to both joints split and it was probably healthier to just whack a whole new one in rather than put new joints on the old one. Had a friend mechanic put it all in and it was fine for about a day..

Driving back from docs Monday morning I could hear a kind of grinding turning right, so before I had time to get the car somewhere safe off the road, I heard a clunk and lost all drive. The guy that did the driveshaft for me said he was convinced it had sheared and it'd be fine but after an AA man recovered my car back to the garage he said the shaft was 100% fine and was still perfectly sat in the correct place. Few hours later my friend phones and says he cant get the driveshaft back out to check it and will need to open the gear box and see :mad:

So something simple has snowballed :/ can anyone add any thoughts to what might be wrong? what am I looking at? my friends garage is in Bristol and he can only work on it after hours so updates are slim

Cars a 54plate Corsa.

Tom_ed1987 · 20 Nov 2013 at 16:43

If he is opening up the gearbox anyway then assuming the gearbox casing is still ok you will probably be looking at a new diff. Not being able to remove the shaft suggests the diff has moved in a way which it shouldn't. Strange though, unless he seated the driveshaft incorrectly and hammered it in with a sledge hammer I don't see how it could have caused any damage.

Dogbreath · 20 Nov 2013 at 16:57

Taking a driveshaft out of the gearbox usually means losing most of the oil. I'm wondering if he actually refilled the box after replacing the driveshaft, did he charge you for new oil?

ins0mn1ac · 20 Nov 2013 at 17:01

His words to me were that he managed to angle the car so not much oil was lost when he took the driveshaft out, didn't need to put much back in just topped it up.

My personal totally unqualified thoughts were always it must have had no oil and just grinded itself up.

Jonny ///M · 20 Nov 2013 at 19:00

Sounds like a 'mechanic friend' I know who was going to put gearbox oil from a box that shot a hole in itself into a second hand box.

You do top up until it comes out the fill hole usually so full is full no matter how much was lost.

lemonade · 20 Nov 2013 at 19:22

Sound dubious, overfilling the gearbox can cause issues as well, the level should be level with the bottom of the filler plug hole.

Dogbreath · 21 Nov 2013 at 00:47

lemonade said:
Sound dubious, overfilling the gearbox can cause issues as well, the level should be level with the bottom of the filler plug hole.

You only know it's reached the correct level when the oil starts coming out on most gearboxes, so Jonny is quite correct.

Tesla · 21 Nov 2013 at 11:05

Can you correctly fill a gearbox if the car is "angled so not much oil comes out"? Assuming you don't level the car off before hand.

Jonny ///M · 21 Nov 2013 at 11:27

The car would need to be at 45 degrees or something daft for not a lot to come out if you remove only one shaft.

You fill it when the car is back on the ground/level so you know when it's full so I would say no you can't fill it whilst it's not in that position.

I've heard of people having to fill boxes up using the speed sensor hole on my car.

Even then you would look up and know it takes 3.9L dry or 3.8L wet.

ins0mn1ac · 21 Nov 2013 at 18:43

Been told now the gearbox is shagged and it's being replaced, not a penny coming from my pockets but I'm still miffed.

I've done loads of youtubing on DIYing this now and I'm pretty confident I could easily do it myself so from what I know now, I'd say there was no oil in it and he actually forgot to do it or the drive-shaft wasn't fully in the gearbox, but then surely when you drop the disc back on the end of the shaft and tighten the hub nut it'd push the shaft in fully anyway?

All I can do is speculate, he's fixing this mess for me regardless, I'm just shocked how easy it looks to DIY and wish I had a crack myself

Dogbreath · 21 Nov 2013 at 19:30

ins0mn1ac said:
but then surely when you drop the disc back on the end of the shaft and tighten the hub nut it'd push the shaft in fully anyway?

Not necessarily. The inner joint is usually a "plunging" joint that can accommodate the required lengthening and shortening of the driveshaft as the suspension moves. It's quite possible to bolt things back together without the splines being fully engaged. I know this as I managed to do it on an old Rover 45 diesel may years back, the partially engaged splines got me about 100 yards before I lost drive, but it all went back together with no damage afterwards.

lemonade · 21 Nov 2013 at 20:27

Dogbreath said:
You only know it's reached the correct level when the oil starts coming out on most gearboxes, so Jonny is quite correct.

Yes I know, I wasn't disputing anything Jonney said, just stating you can check the oil level by sticking in a finger and feeling the oil is level with the filler plug hole.

Can you correctly fill a gearbox if the car is "angled so not much oil comes out"? Assuming you don't level the car off before hand.

It has to be level when filling it up, and you don't want to overfill it! I drained mine and put some fresh oil a week or two ago and quite a bit pours out, the difficulty is putting the filler plug back in as you need to jack the car up again (if you work like I do), which runs the risk of some oil pouring out, but not a biggie.