Drive Shaft

You need a special splined tool to remove the drive shaft bolts, but other than that its just spanner work!

The drive shaft is not hard to change, access is a little awkward at the inner end, but basically it involves -

• Undo the hub nut,
• Remove the wheel,
• Undo the two bolts on the anti roll bar mount,
• Undo the bolt through the lower ball joint,
• Pop the lower ball joint apart, and swing the strut out of the way,
• Undo the six retaining bolts at inner endand remove drive shaft.

As they say, refitting is reverse etc.

Apparently a new shaft from VAG is over £300 for a replacement shaft, and they've stopped doing them exchange as well!

Best bet if you want save money would be to have the shaft fixed by an engineering firm, which ought not to cost more than £100.

John Marchant