A CV joint is a part that helps the car's wheels turn smoothly even when the car moves over bumps or turns. If it breaks, the car might make noises and not move properly.
Rear-wheel steering means the back wheels of a car can turn a little bit to help the car turn better and drive more smoothly. Some fancy cars and electric cars have this feature to make driving easier and safer.
A CV joint is a part in your car that helps the wheels turn smoothly even when the car goes over bumps or turns corners. If it makes clicking noises, it might need fixing.
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Hi, it's Mark.
I'm here with Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, BC, Canada, Vancouver's best
auto service experience.
We're talking cars.
How you doing, Bernie?
Doing well.
So, today's guest is a 2016 Chevrolet Sonic.
What was going on with this vehicle?
So the owner had an appointment booked for the following day and he had some noises
going on with the vehicle when he was driving.
I then called back and said, hey, I pulled over to park, went to put it back in drive
and go somewhere and the vehicle won't go anywhere.
It's making some zinging kind of noise when I try to accelerate and move, but it isn't
going and I thought, I don't know, sounds like maybe the transmission's blown or something
like that would obviously suck and be very expensive.
So he had the vehicle towed down.
And what did you find?
We found the left outer CV joint had basically blown apart.
And of course, what happens is when you put it into drive or reverse, the transmission
goes to turn the axles and it's turning the left axle and that doesn't do anything.
So the vehicle doesn't move.
It's basically the axle shaft is connected to a bunch of broken bits inside the CV joint.
The axle shaft, as my father would say, is connected to the heifer shaft and such and
such.
Yeah, exactly.
I haven't found the heifer shaft, but I'm looking.
We'll look for it next time we're under a car.
So here's our sonic.
Yeah, here's a sonic.
This is oh, yeah.
So it's obvious when you look underneath the vehicle, look around.
Oh, there's our problem.
That boot should not be off like that.
And if you grab the axle shaft is the metal rod, that rusty metal rod to the left.
You grab that, you can just wiggle it up and down.
That has a little bit of play when everything's intact, but not the kind of movement we got.
So it was pretty obviously a CV joint had blown apart.
And so that's a complete axle shaft.
Of course, we replaced the whole unit.
There was a time when you could buy individual CV joints and just replace them by nowadays.
It's a complete axle job and axles are not very expensive like they were at one time.
What do you have here?
Black pudding?
Yeah, black pudding.
Yeah, this is the looking inside the outer CV joint.
And what should be in there is a couple of nice little beautifully machined pieces of
metal, six ball bearings, which are kind of hard to see and it's packed full of grease.
But what we have here is a pudding of grease and broken metal parts.
So I think the thing must have broken apart a couple of occasions and then finally gave
up.
And that's how you get to this.
That's how we get to this.
Yeah.
We're looking at this piece here.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Right here.
Yeah, that's it.
So you mentioned the owner had said that he heard noises.
What kind of noises would you hear if this is starting to fail?
When a CV joint starts to wear out, the typical noise is a very snappy click like when you're
doing a hard turn.
That's usually when they start to make noise.
And interestingly enough, they can make noise like that for a very long time before anything
ever happens.
An actual breaking CV joint like this is not very common.
We see them very rarely.
Sometimes an axle shaft will actually snap, which is hard to imagine a big bar of metal
like that snapping.
But anyways, yeah, the clicky noise is definitely an indication your CV joints are worn.
But I think the noises he was experiencing were slightly different.
And based on the way it snapped and broke apart, it was probably making some more horrific
noises than a traditional CV joint.
But it'd be some kind of clicky clunky noise when you're accelerating usually.
And it usually starts when you're in a tight turn.
Yeah.
So when you're parking and you're trying to pull out of parking place and you make a
really tight turn and a clunk.
Yeah, that's right.
That's an indication.
Oh, I'm going to have some maintenance issues.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah.
And there's nothing you can do to the joint.
Once it starts clicking like that, it's worn out.
There's like very precision machine grooves and ball bearings sit in there and when it
starts to get clicky like that, there's actually a little pit sworn in the machine surfaces.
The ball bearings never wear out, but the machine surfaces do.
And so that's what causes the click.
It's the joint snapping and moving in a way it's not supposed to.
And then, of course, when they do that, then they just get worse and worse.
This is a problem with front wheel drive and four-wheel drive vehicles?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Not rear-wheel drive.
There are a lot of rear-wheel drive vehicles that use CV joints, but they're under very
minimal stress because they don't turn and twist like a front-wheel drive will.
Unless you've got a really expensive car with rear-wheel steering.
That's true.
But I would say that the amount of movement on the rear-wheel steering is very minimal
anyways.
Sure.
At least most of them.
I don't know.
I know there's some new fancy EVs out there that have quite aggressive rear-wheel steering,
but...
Arriving soon.
From China.
Arriving soon.
Arriving soon.
Yeah.
I know some high-end Mercedes have rear-wheel steering.
It's pretty cool on some of their EVs.
So if you're looking for service because you've got clicking in your front end, you need service
for your, what do we call this, the constant velocity joint, the CV joint, the front end
of your car, the people to see in Vancouver are at Pawlik Automotive.
You can reach them on their website at pawlikautomotive.com.
You can check out our almost a thousand videos.
We've been doing this for almost 13 years.
Every week we have a new guest, a new problem.
We look after it all.
We show you what the issue could be so that you can get your car serviced and drive responsibly
and safely.
Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
You can reach them at 604-327-7112 to book your appointment or book online.
Thanks so much for watching and listening.
Thanks, Bernie.
Thank you, Mark.
Thanks for watching.
About this episode
A 2016 Chevrolet Sonic experienced a failure where the left outer CV joint completely broke apart, causing the vehicle to be immobile despite the transmission functioning. The discussion covers the symptoms of a failing CV joint, such as clicking noises during tight turns, and explains why the entire axle shaft must be replaced rather than just the joint. The hosts also touch on the rarity of complete CV joint failure and differences in wear between front-wheel and rear-wheel drive vehicles. Visuals of the damaged parts and maintenance advice are shared.
