Estimated Life Expectancy...

My personal experience with CVs would suggest you could have up to 3 years on a knocky CV, and even then only change it due to thinking it was just too risky to carry on! Depending on your CV, i dont know it, you might be able to replace it with little more than the kit to unbolt your hub nut and lower ball joint and a vice, hammer and pliers, takes about an hour for an outer CV. That said its not a fun job. Replacing the shaft (as is needed on some) is easier, 30 minute job.

Its most likely to fail as steering angle increases and as torque increases, straight roads wont cause it a problem. If you want to reduce the likelyhood of failure try not to accelerate while on sharp lock, try to round-out junctions by doing the "I cant drive and for some reason swing right when turning left despite driving a normal length car that wont scuff the inner rear tyre" - worked for me. I wouldnt advise it though, id advise a new joint/shaft. They're generally

PCPaul (PCPaul ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Sounds like it. Is it worse one way or the other?

Probably a while. The only one I've ever actually lost made some godawful noises for quite a while before actually dying.

It's most likely to go suddenly, whilst pulling away from rest, probably with a chunk of lock on. It'll just make a lot of noise and not go anywhere very quickly. Almost certainly blocking at a busy roundabout at rush hour. IME, anyway...

Can't imagine it's much more than an hour's labour or so.

On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:56:13 -0000, Adrian wrote= :

It'll get very noisy whil;st going fast round corners.

In 1st gear whilst you can see the truck coming. Which is why you just =

floored it :-)

It's a pain to get the driveshaft out of the hub (ot it'll fall out, but= =

sods law etc.), so 1hrs labour &

And your knowledge of that problem is?

I've had one deteriorate quickly- from no noticeable problem to notchy to horrible noises within a few miles. I'd change it ASAP.