Why you need a CV driveshaft.

[Andy8421]

In those days, I could only dream of owning a Cooper.....

[Chancer]

hardy spicer as in a UJ joint?

I knew that I had seen them on a very early vehicle, if it was an UJ for the inner there must have been some interesting torsional vibrations with one UJ creating a non constant velocity and a CV joint at the other end, cant have been good for fatigue life.

Whoever spoke of earlyn and late minis made me smile, I never got to own or work on a later mini, every one that I have had a spanner on had rubber inner couplings with U bolts, no doubt on later cars they did away with the terrible swivel pins and fitted sealed ball joints.

I must have replaced hundreds of top & bottom swivels and re-shimmed thousands of others, then one fatefull day I was distracted and forgot to hammer over the retaining locktab

[john.p.clegg]

[quote="Chancer"]hardy spicer as in a UJ joint?

http://minisport.com.au/mini-hardy-spic ... ingle-unit

John

[Andy8421]

hardy spicer as in a UJ joint?

I knew that I had seen them on a very early vehicle, if it was an UJ for the inner there must have been some interesting torsional vibrations with one UJ creating a non constant velocity and a CV joint at the other end, cant have been good for fatigue life.

In comparison to the outer joint which has to cope with steering angles, the inner joint only has to cope with the driveshaft swinging as the wheel moves up and down. The mini doesn't have a great deal of suspension travel, so the inner joint never has to work at much of an angle. As the amount of harmonic vibration introduced by a Hooke joint is dependent on the angle of the joint, I doubt it adds much additional vibration over the normal clatter and banging of a Mini. Before this thread educated me that Minis had used Hooke joints for the more powerful versions, I thought all early Minis had used the rubber inboard joint - partly to damp any residual problems that my occur.

I used to work weekends in a motor spares shop. We used to sell these things all the time. The heat from the exhaust cooked them, and the inevitable oil leaks rotted them. They failed regularly - rather like the Rotoflex.

http://www.minispares.com/product/Classic/GCD101.aspx

[elj221c]

I am pretty sure that early minis and perhaps 1100's had one hooke joint as the inner coupling, must have been a CV joint as the outer. All the later cars had doughnuts for the inner coupling.

Or have I been dreaming?

Early minis had CV outer and a nasty maltese cross rubber abomination as the inner coupling. Later minis had a non-plunging CV at the wheel end and a plunging CV at the gearbox end.

Even the 'nasty maltese cross' drive shaft end was splined.

The subject of angles on joints was discussed here with a couple of useful links.

lotus-elan-f19/prop-orientation-t25151.html#p163497