I checked my driveshafts also and surprise, I found grease leaks at both of them, the inner side and the short one is making clank-clank noises when I release the clutch after changing the gear. Funny, I had this noise but not so loud like now, since I bought the car last year, 10.000 miles ago and now its getting louder and louder. Tried to find the Tutela MRM Zero in my area with no success tho. I'm wondering if the regular Lithium/Graphite one works for the inner joint. I inspected the rubbers on both and they seem fine, probably the collars got loose, seems like a common problem, since we all got this issue.

For me its the amounts that make the difference, Think any CV grease will do really, but dont overfill or you could turn the gaiter into an "icing bag" ;-)

tarquin1867 said:

For me its the amounts that make the difference, Think any CV grease will do really, but dont overfill or you could turn the gaiter into an "icing bag" ;-)

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I see, yeah I think that any CV grease is better than nothing . Now I'm looking if I can pull this job alone. I'm wondering if the gearbox oil will drop out if I take the drive shaft out. Changing the inner collar without taking out the drive shaft its out of the question I think ..... would be a good option, but the space looks so small. Did you serviced your driveshafts ?

No I didn`t as my days of "scroaming about under cars has long gone. Is it the passenger side that is "clonking"? I have no experience of this side, only the drivers side.
My experience with this has lead me to think that it could be done with the wheel off and the wheel acrh lining out, however it may be worth checking the state of the wheel bearing as well before you just change the shaft. The bearing/ carriage has the tell tale teeth on the outside which gives loads of info to the computer about wheel slip/ ABS/ ESP and god only knows what else. It comes already set up and must not be moved during fitting or your dashboard will light up like a Xmas tree.
In truth I think it is a job for an Indie who is used to modern cars.

The problem with changing the "tulip" (inner shaft) is not just loss of gearbox oil but the correct fitting of a new oil seal at that end.
If you decide that "faint heart never kissed a pig" and you go for it yourself keep us all up to speed:worship:

Now its the short one that is clonking, one the left side that is, for me is driver side as the driving wheel is on left for me. The right one is not clonking yet, or it may be clonking but more silently than the left one, this one still has some grease as I find some dripping every week, but the left one is dry. I'm affraid I will have to change it, probably someone has to check if the damage took place only on the tulip or the shaft has to be completely changed, as I saw in ePer, the driveshaft only has two components that can be changed, the tulip and the rest (shaft+joint+rubber seals, and the price ... oh the price is very high. I had the clonk noise since I bought the car, asked a good mechanic if its from the driveshaft and he told me that the "play" its normal and the noise its from somewhere else so I believe it until I found more grease under the car and noise got louder. Thank you for sharing me "the secrets of the wheel bearing" , now after all that you told me, I will positively, I'm 100% sure that I will not take out the driveshaft. I will try to fit the collar with it on the car, if I can't succeed I will try different collar, one with adjusting screw, now I got the OEM one. I really have to solve the problem, as the noise is too loud, and the shocks are most likely not good for the gearbox. And yes, I will keep you updated when I make a move, for the moment I'm dealing with some bodywork problems after a small accident.

Mine doesn't clonk - it just shakes the car between 35-45mph when accelerating. No noise at all.

Mine's getting the correct(ish)* amount of Tutela MRM Zero tomorrow, so will see how it goes.

* The car spec says 120g. The grease spec says it's 0.9g/ml. So 120g = 133ml. The grease comes in 125ml tubes (presumably +/- some tolerance). The Fiat dealer I bought it from says they always use exactly 1 tube per joint, indeed that's why they are the size they are. So it will get one whole tube, squeezed and wrung out.

And mine clonks, but it doesn't wobble or shakes. I can say there is a small wobble noise from the "play" it has but only on a road with level oscillations.

How are you doing the change? With driveshaft on or off the car ? What type of collars you bought for the rubber seals ?

Good luck with the operation, can't wait for the details

Mine's an almost new reconditioned driveshaft, so no new parts needed - just take apart, clean, grease, re-assemble. Hopefully problem solved, but I doubt it.

Sorry to confuse you regarding "drivers side etc".
If I understand you correctly - you can see grease on the road when you move the car?
This is very unlikely to be grease as it is thick and not really viscous enough to "drip" out, this is more likely to be oil from somewhere.
An oil leak from higher up the engine will often find its way down the engine block and drip off the lower points like the gearbox and diff. for example my son has a Punto which had a leak from, the cam cover but the oil dripped from the engine sump after running down the block.

tarquin1867 said:

Sorry to confuse you regarding "drivers side etc".
If I understand you correctly - you can see grease on the road when you move the car?
This is very unlikely to be grease as it is thick and not really viscous enough to "drip" out, this is more likely to be oil from somewhere.
An oil leak from higher up the engine will often find its way down the engine block and drip off the lower points like the gearbox and diff. for example my son has a Punto which had a leak from, the cam cover but the oil dripped from the engine sump after running down the block.

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No problem, no confusion. I'm sorry, I said it wrong about grease under the car, the grease was all over the engine compartment on the line wherr the rubber seal of the shaft ends towards the gearbox and an impressuve amount of grease was sticking right under the rubber seals in the same line mentioned above. I'll post some pics later today after I finish mounting my bumper and headlight.

Its me again!!
Just seen on E-Learn under"rear axle"!!!!???
There is a breakdown of both the 2.2 petrol and all the diesel transmission shafts--they are different!! My guess is that we have a Fiat/ Vauxhall thing here. there are no "tulips" on the 2.2 ???
Any way I now can see that the left hand side of the diesel is shorter than the right side but both have "tulips" (this is what you get for being to old to get under and dirty any more).
Roberto- you can do some tests on the shafts on both sides by just jacking up one wheel at a time, take the wheel off put the car in 1st gear . Take hold of the shaft between the two rubber gaitors and try turning both ways holding the brake disc in the other hand. There will be some play due to a bit of backlash in the gearbox but if you can feel a clonk on the disc end it will be this one making the noise. Then hold the middle again but this time take hold of the Tulip near the diff and move one one way and one the other, any large amount of movement will show that this is the problem, there will be some movement but not much.If its on the wheel end there will be no need to disturb the seal on the diff.
This could save you from clutches of the dealers

Hi tarquin, thank you for research, already did that 2 weeks ago, but I didnt had time for internet due to some family trouble, and yes there is a big play in the left tulip and the noise is dry as there is no grease there. I have read on elearn too, the driveshafts are both identical, the only difference is that the right tulip has a longer shaft and thats all. The play in my keft driveshaft is 2-3 times bigger than in the right one, and the right one has some play also, about 4mm, so the left one has 10-12 mm. Tomorrow I will measure the play exactly abd update the post

Here are the photos:

This is much clearer now, both sides have shot the grease out of the tulip joint and from your photos its a wonder that the attendant drive belt is not slipping on the pulley, its getting well lubricated!!!
I think one way to lessen the financial blow would be if you could source a couple of Tripod joints which fit in the tulip and are what is most likely to what is worn out. They are held onto the splines of the shaft by a circlip and would be a doddle to change if you could source them in your country I have tried everywhere over hear but they only seem to be supplied to the firms who "refurbish" shafts as a business.
I am sure that they only change this end of the shaft on most them when they get them as over time they will have made a judgement call on the other end which is more of a normal CV joint which they have more experience of.
Having checked on the qualities of steel the various parts are made from it is certain that the Tulip will be harder than the tripod and as I have said before in a thread the normal way to engineer out difficult jobs is to design it so the easy to do job wears out first, but of course, we are talking about Fiat- or even worse- Vauxhall:yuck: Dont bother measuring again its obvious from what you say the Tripod is no good

Found these on Italian eBay
http://bit.ly/14CFSE3

Far Canal !!!

£25 and I paid £280 ish for a "new" shaft .

Dealer car spares :bang:

tarquin1867 said:

its a wonder that the attendant drive belt is not slipping on the pulley, its getting well lubricated!!!

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The grease is not reaching the belt, its going right at the back of the pulley, which BTW has broken after 150.000 km, so if anyone has the mileage and didn't changed it, you may reconsider. It broke when idling, I heard the noise, it sounded like I lost some heavy screw, I stopped, looked around, seen nothing and kept running for another 150 km, then I went to change the cam belt and seen this pulley broken. After it broke, the belt stayed on the inner part as you can see in the pictures bellow, that was strange, but it seemed that the tensioner pulley did the job and found the exterior part just laying around in the engine bay.

Well, today after work I gave it one more look to check the play and measure it correctly and I had o surprise. Seems that at the previous check I didn't do it properly, as now I found out that I have no play in the shafts, the play seems to be in the diff and when I turn the shaft back and forth I hear some noises like the diff is not lubricated, but there's no oil signs anywhere. I have looked in elearn to see if there is a way to check the oil level easy, but no luck.

Now back to the grease leak, I forced a just a little bit the rubber and it went out of the tulip as you can see in the photos below. Then the grease started to drip like it was some thick oil. Well that was strange, I thought the grease its very thick and shouldn't drip, at least the lithium one that I bought is very thick and it doesn't drip at all. Doofer can tell us if the Tutela MRM Zero that he has is dripping or even make us a picture because I am very confused right now . Well after all of this I have put back the rubber and changed the collar with a zip tie just temporary until I figure out what grease I should put back in.

That does look very thin!!
However dont overlook the obvious, if you bought the car second hand somebody may have had a go at this before and didnt put the correct grease in.
If you now say that you have not much play in the CV joints then its a whole new ball game.
Interestingly there is no amount of gearbox oil specified for the 6 speed manual gearbox in my Fiat manual , I think that it could be a sealed for life type ?
There is also no service interval for checking the level like there used to be on older cars.
If you cannot see an obvious leak or an obvious filling point then its a head scratcher for me. Somebody may be able to give you more guidance than me
Also one of the photos shows a very clean /white label on one of the shafts and nice clean black paint on it If thats not a new shaft I`ll eat my underpants!!!

Yes, it is thin, I found out why. The type of the grease used in inner tripod joints is semi-fluid, NLGI-0 classification. The one for the outer joint is NLGI-2, which is medium viscosity. So the grease it supposed to drip, but not like this one does, which makes me think that the OEM is not so great, that's why its dripping from many shafts. The shafts are old, I've cleaned this one and that's why it looks like new . Now I have to find a good NLGI-0 grease with MoS2 and some good collars.