Americas Front Driveshaft CV redesign

[Commodore]

Ineos crew, there is an issue with the front driveshaft CV at the transfer case side. The acute driveline angle generates heat causing the rubber on the CV to rip and spill grease. This leads to failure of the CV joint and ultimately immediate loss of forward propulsion. The failures have been well documented. Do you have plans to redesign this part or should owners start looking for their own permanent solutions?

This is a serious safety concern that needs to be resolved.

 

[Commodore]

It's interesting to read about it again and again..... strangely enough, almost only from the USA! From my point of view, Ineos would have to fundamentally revise the entire cardan shaft connection (including axle design and transfer case). Unfortunately, most customers don't have a clue about the problem, but just looking at the axle shaft should give the layman food for thought! Too little is happening (yet), but I think it's a time bomb.
(I have an angle of the front joint of 8° (6° inclination of the shaft +2° caster or inclination of the drive train) when stationary at standard height, which is considerable! When sprung out, the value increases accordingly up to 14° and 12° respectively!)

Interesting that you see it more in the USA. My theory is that it’s more of a heat issue from the constant flexing of the boot during rotation. The US has long highway drives at 80 to 90 mph. Those highway miles are going to put a lot of heat in the plastic boot especially if it’s summer in the west and air temp is 105 degrees.

 

[Clark Kent]

Interesting that you see it more in the USA. My theory is that it’s more of a heat issue from the constant flexing of the boot during rotation. The US has long highway drives at 80 to 90 mph. Those highway miles are going to put a lot of heat in the plastic boot especially if it’s summer in the west and air temp is 105 degrees.

Generalising a bit more; I have the impression that US owners who go off-road spend more time traversing rocky terrain at low speeds where height changes over ledges and steps cause more full suspension and drive line articulation cycles per track mile than other countries and driving conditions. More of a bias towards rock wheeling than overlanding. Would that be an accurate assessment or have YouTubes in Utah skewed my impression of what you guys do most when you go off-road?
For sure other countries have rough terrain, including our lovely corrugations (washboard ruts) in Australia, but that's not flexing and stressing the driveline in the same way as low speed crawling over rocks where the joints are operating at maximum torque and displacement angle.

So perhaps this is another reason why the USA is seeing more failures of the joint at the TC end, empirically at least. You guys use your Grenadiers different to other regions on terrain where Wranglers do well because they're built more for that environment.

In other words: Are you guys just rough on your toys?

 

[CRH]

Generalising a bit more; I have the impression that US owners who go off-road spend more time traversing rocky terrain at low speeds where height changes over ledges and steps cause more full suspension and drive line articulation cycles per track mile than other countries and driving conditions. More of a bias towards rock wheeling than overlanding. Would that be an accurate assessment or have YouTubes in Utah skewed my impression of what you guys do most when you go off-road?
For sure other countries have rough terrain, including our lovely corrugations (washboard ruts) in Australia, but that's not flexing and stressing the driveline in the same way as low speed crawling over rocks where the joints are operating at maximum torque and displacement angle.

So perhaps this is another reason why the USA is seeing more failures of the joint at the TC end, empirically at least. You guys use your Grenadiers different to other regions on terrain where Wranglers do well because they're built more for that environment.

In other words: Are you guys just rough on your toys?

Or is it just the volume of vehicles sold in US compared to everywhere else?

 

[Clark Kent]

Or is it just the volume of vehicles sold in US compared to everywhere else?

Any or all of those things

 

[parb]

I think it's a bit of all of it.

 

[Zimm]

We wheel. I.e. we aim for the hard line. It’s weekend toy here, not a tool.

Been more than one grocery getter with a failed cv though. If one removes the damaged units from wheeling or poor spring upgrade procedure, I do wonder if the grocery getter failure is within the norm.

 

[Zimm]

That Agile shaft frightens me. The angles on the tcase and diff visually look too different. I hope it works well for those that use it, but nothing that may wear over time is a cheap fix. I’ll let others rack up miles on that before I throw those dice.

 

[Dokatd]

Truth be told, I don’t even mind the low caster. I was on trails yesterday and was thinking about how nice it is that the steering wheel just stays put and doesn’t bounce around.

Well, additional caster will improve that more. Caster is what holds the steering in a relatively straight line for lack of a better description. You may be confusing stiction or dampening of the steering stabilizer if you're suggesting the truck is more point and shoot when maneuvering around stuff. Reducing caster makes the steering more vague and reactive to bumps and undulations in the road/trail. Having a crap ton of steering dampening reduces the wobble and vague feeling of low caster.

 

[Dokatd]

Generalising a bit more; I have the impression that US owners who go off-road spend more time traversing rocky terrain at low speeds where height changes over ledges and steps cause more full suspension and drive line articulation cycles per track mile than other countries and driving conditions. More of a bias towards rock wheeling than overlanding. Would that be an accurate assessment or have YouTubes in Utah skewed my impression of what you guys do most when you go off-road?
For sure other countries have rough terrain, including our lovely corrugations (washboard ruts) in Australia, but that's not flexing and stressing the driveline in the same way as low speed crawling over rocks where the joints are operating at maximum torque and displacement angle.

So perhaps this is another reason why the USA is seeing more failures of the joint at the TC end, empirically at least. You guys use your Grenadiers different to other regions on terrain where Wranglers do well because they're built more for that environment.

In other words: Are you guys just rough on your toys?

Just FYI, Moab, and the like in Utah, is honestly some of the easier 4 wheeling in the states. It's just so damn scenic and nice though. We have some much much more harsh areas that really work trucks hard. My favorite stuff is in Las Cruces, NM. It's up there with the hardest practical trails. Lots of stuff that a Grenadier just couldn't do, at least not without serious damage anyways.

That said, I'm not convinced many of the boot failures are happening on trucks being used hard off-road. I think most are from extended onroad use. And even then I think many of those are simply from pinched boots at lift install. It doesn't forgive the fact that the angles up front are dumb, but it does explain things a bit.