So I was doing my pizza delivery job and I was driving up a hill not going to fast, and I hit a small bump and the car dipped to the right and slid for 20 feet and I stopped right at the stop sign facing a major street (close call) so anyways I got out and looked at it and the ball joint came right out of place, and the nut was laying right beside, I looked closer and noticed the axel was separated at the CV joint and the 3 CV peices were scattered around, how could this have happend? I didnt find the cotter pin for the ball joint nut, also its a 91 civic if that matters..

 

They just wear out. They do give warning. Someone else posted about a nasty clicking sound when turning. That's a CV joint going. If you fix it soon enough you save the axle. If you let it go the axle fails catastrophically like yours did. It's one of those things you don't want to ignore. Imagine having it happen at a nice rate of speed on the interstate or on a nice curvy road with no shoulder.

In your defense, if you've never heard the sound before you wouldn't know to associate it with the CV joint. I didn't the first time. But I was lucky and had it in for brakes and they caught it in time. From that point forward I knew what a bad CV joint sounded and felt like. Now you knowl

 

The Ball joint failure and the CV joint failure are two different things, but in this case it seems the bump was the start of the problem...

Likely the CV joint came apart because the ball joint came apart and the entire weight of the car was pulling against the CV joint.the CV joint may have never even been bad, if the ball joint fails while your driving, it's going to break stuff... You should be very glad you were able to control the car, and did not wreck... It kinda sounds like the cotter pin wasn't in tthe ball joint nut, and it just came lose and then came off...

If you do have a broken or clicking CV joint though, you would know it.. I drove around my first car ( 94 ford escort gt ) with a broken cv joint for a week... couldn't go over 45, because if you did it would shake the living crap out of you.... it was an inner CV joint so I never heard a click when turning, like you would with the outer joint... so I never associated the shake with the axle until my mechanic drove the car... He took it out of the lot, went about 30 feet and turned back in, said mike, you have a boke CV joint...

Just remember that the only time you're going to hear the axle clicking is if the outer cv joint is failing, the inner joints don't give an audible indication until they are broken, then you will hear the click when you coast and then get back on the gas, and it should be really vibrating pretty bad... That's why you're supposed to be getting up under there every oil change and inspecting the boots for leaks...

Just a bit of advice though, when your mechanic puts you're front end back together, make sure they thouroughly check the other side to make sure that ball joint is okay, and also you need to have them check out the tie rods and tie rod ends on both sides, if you had enough pull against it to snap the axle, I'm sure there's more than just that broken, and better safe than sorry...

 

Thanks for the input, yeah I guess the mechanic that did the safety abuot 30 days ago obviously didnt do his job. Im going to check over everything when I get a chance. Thanks!

 

Thanks for the info on inner and outer CV joint. I didn't know that the inner gives no audible clue.