Sorry i`m late replying , just had to find the ketchup to make the underpants taste better:yum:
All i can say is that when the grease leaked from my inner joint it made a nice pile in a line with the end of the gaitor it was defo the grease from the factory as the car only had 900mls on when I got it. My indie mechanic said it had the consistency of spreadable margarine so it bears no resemblance to what you have in yours.
Lets wait for your new stuff and see what Fluid semi means in grease!

Thank you, thank you heroic Tarquin!

I honestly didn't expect much, but mine's now been cleaned out and has just one tube of Tutela MRM Zero. I can't believe it - it's as smooth as a very smooth thing. I've just wellied it in 2nd up a hill and was instinctively waiting for the waggle but - nothing. Wow. Long may it stay that way.

The mechanic said he normally stuffs them full - he seemed a bit reluctant to only put this much in. But it works.

So hopefully one of my two issues is fixed. Now I'm hoping that the brakes are still OK.

Stop it your making me blush you naughty boy!!!
All I need now is 3points tomorrow against Millwall and i`ve also learned today that the huge Sycamore tree outside my house is being taken out--finally after 25yrs of trying

WHOOPIDDOO

Morning croma owners. Had a lot of trouble with this 40 wobble, been in 3 different garages and none of them fixed it even after me asking them in plain English to check the drive shaft and re pack the gaiter boot thing! Get this kwik fit been the worst who told me it was the rear passenger wheel that was out of shape and needed replacing cos it's skipping on the road! When they called me to tell me that he also mentioned I have a sports suspension so they couldn't do anything if the drive shaft was broken. Iv never laughed so much as I told the guy that I accidentally got brake calliper paint on the springs so I just painted them as well. Sports suspension my ars! Anyway I gave up bought some grease from ek brakes, took the boot off slightly and stuffed some grease in then used a extra strong cable tie to seal it again. A bit rash and not very professional I know but the wobble as gone completely

Ahewitt said:

Morning croma owners. Had a lot of trouble with this 40 wobble, been in 3 different garages and none of them fixed it even after me asking them in plain English to check the drive shaft and re pack the gaiter boot thing! Get this kwik fit been the worst who told me it was the rear passenger wheel that was out of shape and needed replacing cos it's skipping on the road! When they called me to tell me that he also mentioned I have a sports suspension so they couldn't do anything if the drive shaft was broken. Iv never laughed so much as I told the guy that I accidentally got brake calliper paint on the springs so I just painted them as well. Sports suspension my ars! Anyway I gave up bought some grease from ek brakes, took the boot off slightly and stuffed some grease in then used a extra strong cable tie to seal it again. A bit rash and not very professional I know but the wobble as gone completely

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Well that is a salutory tale to everybody who fears the worst, do the cheap obvious jobs first!!!!!.
Really glad you have had the same experience as Doofer. One thing I would caution against is just bunging the grease in, if you overfill you could get to a position where the gaitor is compressed and the grease forced out under the end where the tulip is this could cause the shaped end on the gaitor to be lubricated and this could lead to it sliding off the tulip and all the grease "evacuating" and the wobble returning!!
As I said further up the thread when I found there was a specification for type/ quantity of grease in my manual it became obvious that the designers had done some work on this otherwise why specify an amount?

tarquin1867 said:

As I said further up the thread when I found there was a specification for type/ quantity of grease in my manual it became obvious that the designers had done some work on this otherwise why specify an amount?

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I'm not totally sure the designers have done as much design work as we would like to think.

Whilst you need right specification grease for the right application and of course sufficient and not too much I'm very puzzled by the amount of people suffering grease expulsion from the tripod/tulip CV joint.

Typical causes for this are:

Too much grease
Poor gaiter sealing - possibly caused by gaiter hardening or joint over flexing or gradual seepage of a too liquidy grease when hot that very slowy over many miles works its way under the gaiter sealed edge.

This latter slow seepage is a possibility because of the narrow gaiter seat area on the tulip. If the gaiter were to move over time down the tulip then it will hit the scolloped section of tulip and the seal will be broken.

I check my joints every service for leaks, play and noise/roughness . Next time I think I'm going to spend quite some time looking at the in CV joints in closer detail to see if there is any plausible explanation for this loss of grease from the inner CV joints only.

Hi S130- Its very easy to get "discombobulated " about this , I am a shining example!!!
If you look at the pages of my manual I posted in #14 -06/07/13 you can see the actual V the exploded sketch how it was supposed to be.
The exploded diagram clearly shows that on the outside edge of the open end of the tulip is a series of "nicks on the High points for the gaiter to be tightened on to by the big jubilee clip.
Although it is not so well lit there does not appear to be one on the actual photograph!!!?
On the photo entitled "Protective boot" you can see the internal shape of the gaiter which appears to stop at the 1st corrugation inside. This leads me to believe that it is only supposed to fit onto the very end of the tulip.
If we accept this, it is not much of a gripping surface for the gaiter, and you can envisage what can happen if a bit of grease gets in between .
Another thing that has crossed my mind is that if you overtighten the clip it could cause some deformation on the inside of the gaiter which could also lead to a grease leak during use.
On the E-Learn under"rear axle"!!!! (WTF) are arrangements for the 2.2 16v and the 1.9&2.4 diesels , the 2.2 does not have the same tulips that all the diesels have? The ( what I will call the tulip replacement) has a gaiter that fully covers the whole joint, The back of the "tulip" is splined onto the extension to the drive shaft.
As the vauxhall vectra also has our type of design? is it safe to assume that the 2.2 is a Fiat and the troublesome version is Vauxhall?

I have found the source of my "clonk" noise. The right driveshaft was almost dry out of grease. As I did't found any Tutela MRM Zero or something NLGI-0, I topped up in both tripods with 100gr of Lithium/Graphite grease. I will not stop searching the right grease, but until then it will stay like this. Now it is all smooth, no clonk or wobble, but the tripod may have suffered some damage during the time without grease. When I took off the collar, I could feel that it was more loose than the one from left side, probably the problem is from the material used to manufacture the collars ...OR it is an intended manufacture defect to sell some driveshafts after warranty, but I guess we will never find out. I have checked the plastic zip on the left side after a 500km trip and it was all dry and clean.

Tarquin, I found this video on Youtube, in which you can see the difference between NLGI-0 and NLGI-2 grease:



Here are some pics of the right driveshaft:

Well now that is 3 of us who can say that grease is the key to stopping the wobble!!
If you are not getting any wobbly or clonk with what you describe as more wear on the side which was dry?? then it shows a bit of wear is not a problem!
I can see by your photos that there is a location "nick" on the points of the tulip after all, did you notice any more signs of a location gulley around the rest of the outside of the tulip?
I would think that if the idea of the gaiter is to keep dirt out and grease in there should be one which will act to stop the gaiter sliding off the end of the tulip. My mechanic cannot remember if there was such a thing on mine( manufactured in 2005 Dec ) . Yours might have been a later manufacture and the design may have altered .
Its nice also that the cable tie ideal works for you as it will not allow a really high amount of tightening like a jubilee clip will if you "give it some " but it is obviously enough to hold it in position without any possible distortion of the internal shape of the gaiter which of course would be enough to allow grease to leak out.

Oh how i wish I could spend time under my car as I used to!! even checking the oil and topping up the washer bottle gets the back of my legs pulling a 5 on the "pain-ometer":yum::slayer::bang:

tarquin1867 said:

I can see by your photos that there is a location "nick" on the points of the tulip after all, did you notice any more signs of a location gulley around the rest of the outside of the tulip?

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No, those are the only ones, six n total, but they are enough. The big problem is with the collars. The plastic zip works for now, I will check their condition from time to time and if it is necessary I will replace them with something else. But I used same type on my old Fiat Tempra 1.6 SX, 1995 manufacture year, which had the tripods in the gearbox, they kept the gearbox oil from leaking as that was also the lubrication for the tripods. If they kept that from leaking and lasted over time, I don't see why these wouldn't.
Tarquin, my Croma is also born in december 2005, maybe they are sisters

Mine's turned to crap again. Accelerating up a hill today with a bit of load, I got the familiar feeling like I was sitting on a giant centipede that was walking. It pulls left-right-left-right, probably about four footsteps per second.

I'm thinking that the garage isn't securing the collar properly. It works fine for a bit, presumably until it's had a good spin-dry and lost all its grease.

I'll have a look myself, see if my little brain can work anything out.

That's bad, I hope you fix it soon. My plastic zip ties are 700 miles old and they are still there and no grease is getting out. I check them often so it's all good, anyway I would need a special tool to mount the OEM ones which I have, but no tool to tighten them. If you have problems with the collars, I recommend you to try some zip ties

i use this tool
not draper but ones from every thing is £1 shop and STAINLESS STEEL CV JOINT BOOT CLIPS from ebay

Good one Dave, thank you. Did you used it with the driveshaft on the car ? I will need to change both collars at the gearbox side.

yes on the car, off the car would be a lot easier

I admit that I thought about this tool, but I didn't knew if it works. Now that I have the confirmation, I will buy one and use it when I will change the zip ties with some proper collars. Thank you Dave

Doofer said:

Mine's turned to crap again. Accelerating up a hill today with a bit of load, I got the familiar feeling like I was sitting on a giant centipede that was walking. It pulls left-right-left-right, probably about four footsteps per second.

I'm thinking that the garage isn't securing the collar properly. It works fine for a bit, presumably until it's had a good spin-dry and lost all its grease.

I'll have a look myself, see if my little brain can work anything out.

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Just got back off holiday to find the wobble is back!!!:yuck:. If you are right and the grease has made a bid for freedom again it will be doubly reassuring if it goes away again if you "stuff it once more" and it goes away . I wait in anticipation!!

are people properly removing shaft from cup when re-greasing, or just pealing back the boot and shoving grease in?

Sorry but I can't help think that there is a fundamental problem with the Croma/Vectra etc. driveshaft setup.

Yes people have had boots seeping grease
Yes a new grease replenish and reseal appears to work ......... but for how long etc. seems to be vary variable problematic.

NEVER EVER on any Fiat I have ever owned, have knowledge of, worked on, etc. over the last 42 years, except for the Croma/GM setup have drive shafts, wobble, telly tubby, conservative, labour, liberal, etc issues been known to cause so much agro.

I'm at 66K + miles, have already had new drive shafts fitted, had no boot leaks prior to intial driveshaft replacement under warranty, currently have no boot leaks etc. but I'm far from happy with the noises and play in the driveshaft train, most of which is related to the inner tulip & spider couplings.

My advice is 1) accept the design is *ucked 2) prepare/save for the inevitable 3) avoid any GM engineering that Fiat picked up during their collaboration period. GM got the crown jewels (i.e. Fiat diesel, 16V, Mutlijet direct injection technology etc) Fiat got suckered into and Epsilon bag of bones and inferior design and quality and production garbage.

I think I can be 110% certain that no Fiat design or production engineer was ever involved in the decision, let alone the assessment of the GM 'content' that would be introduced into the Fiat model production.

The whole sad episode was accountant driven, director share holder value driven and a shed load of other "driven" tick marks that had nothing to do with longevity, reliability, etc.

I'm hoping that lessons have bean learnt and any Chrysler input back into the Fiat system will only be allowed if it genuinely address reliability, longevity, European performance standards etc.

As much as I love my Croma I do not wan't to have to worry about, tolerate, etc. another Fiat/GM/Croma experience ever again.

Hi S130- Have you any thoughts of what I wrote in #67 . Regarding the 2.2 being a different assembly around the "tulip" and that it could be Fiat and the diesels Vauxcrap?