Axle bolts frustration
 

Well, my left side axle came loose again today.

It happened on the freeway maybe six months ago, shortly after rebuilding both axles. I had the torque right on the bolts, had put a generous amount of blue loctite on each of them, but I hadn't realized there was a bit of CV grease in the holes. I sprayed everything out with brake cleaner, cleaned the bolts, and put them back in with more loctite. Three checks over the next month and they seemed like they were fine.

This time I drilled the bolts for safety wire on top of the brake cleaner and loctite. Had thought about it the last time, but the garage had just been cleaned, so I couldn't find half my stuff. I really hope this is the last time I have to deal with the axles- so far this is my only real complaint with the car.

With safety wire those bolts are going nowhere.. :p

Same thing happened to a friend of mine, his are safety wired now. Since mine are out, I'll probably do the same. Better safe than sorry.

I'm hard pressed to understand this problem. We have probably removed and replaced a thousand axle flange bolts over the years, and reinstalled them by cleaning the bolts and bolt holes, using blue Loctite, and torquing them to spec; and to my knowledge, none of them have ever come loose.

The only thing I can figure is if axle grease migrated out of the joint and degraded the loctite. My rebuild kits came with a gasket that I thought was meant to keep that from happening, but if the gasket material failed over time then grease might be able to escape. The thing looked like it was made of cork, which I thought was odd at the time, but I don't second guess things like that unless they seem completely off- like "the Mk4 Jetta transmission fluid is good for the lifetime of the vehicle, you never need to do any maintenance."

Was I not meant to put in gaskets on the outer cap, or were there better ones I should have known about?

I have no problem admitting my mistakes or learning about new ones, the first time was clearly my fault with not sufficiently cleaning the grease out of the holes in the joint body.

i do not know what gaskets you are referring to..........this is the Porsche parts system diagram for the axels, and there is no gasket:

https://dz310nzuyimx0.cloudfront.net...205784e7dd.png

Thank you, I suppose I should have looked that up before doing the work- I ordered 4x of this part number from Pelican, and they came with a gasket like I described. Of course they're not mentioned on the part description, or shown in the photos, but the photos don't show the clamps and grease that came with the boots either, so who knows.

https://www.pelicanparts.com/cgi-bin/smart/more_info.cgi?pn=928-332-293-02-M60

So if I had to guess, the unnecessary gasket failed, grease migrated out, and the loctite failed as a result. Maybe with a helping hand from extra room from the missing thickness of the gasket. Is there anything needed to seal parts 4 and 5 together in the diagram? Other than the clamping force of the axle bolts, I guess. Is that enough?

The weird thing is that the other side hasn't had any such troubles, and I didn't do anything different there. Maybe time to check those bolts too.

As a cautionary practice. When I did rebuilt my 2001 986 drive shafts last winter, I did use new bolts on assembly and also cleaned the bolt holes on the drive shafts as well as the threads on the tranny side with brake cleaner before assebly with loctite.

So far those are holding up well on street and track use...

These boot kits can often fit multiple vehicles, so they can contain parts that are not needed in some applications. When #4 & 5 are assembled, the boot is the only seal to the outside and there is nothing between the CV joint and the flange on a Boxster.

https://www.design911.co.uk/uploads/...98-05_no10.gif

Thank you again, I think I found at least one example of exactly what you're talking about- if the photo loaded properly, that's exactly the look of the gaskets I received.

Notice that the older 911 flange does not have a lip, while the Boxster flange does? Makes all the difference......