thanks for telling me that i could use my 4th gen axles with my new 5th gen tranny guys. because you were wrong. and it caused a lot of trouble for me.

i don't want anyone else to make the same mistake i did, so here is the final word on axles when you're doing a 5th gen tranny swap:

THE 5TH GEN DRIVER'S SIDE CV AXLE IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. YOUR 4TH GEN AXLE WILL NOT FIT. PERIOD.

the passenger side axle is fine, but you MUST get a new driver's side axle.

just putting that fact out there in case anyone needs to know in the future. and mods, if there's any way you can change the post about this swap in the faq sticky to include this information, i'd appreciate it.


p.s. if you're one of the people (dave sz, i'm looking at you, mostly because you were a **** about it) who gave me this advice, what the hell were you thinking? DO NOT give advice if you don't know what you're talking about, because it could seriously screw someone over.

 

got a part number for the axle?

 

I thought I read this awhile ago? Shrug, I thought this was commonly accepted.

 

WRONG! I just did 5spd swap few months back and I used 5th gen tranny with BOTH 4th gen axles. It fits perfectly fine and drives fine. I don't know what happened to you, but 5th gen tranny with 4th gen axles work. You probably have the parts mixed up.

 

I know for a fact it works as well.

 

im not too familiar with tranny stuff but maxima8624 is right, i saw his job, and there seems to be nothing wrong. Try double checking. maybe you made a small mistake. Good luck.

 

lol thx for backing me up
pm me when you're going to do clutch job.
I really want some brazilian BBQ!

 

haha fo sho
hey, btw, do you know exactly what i will need for the 5th gen clutch swap?
What the hell are you doing still awake!?

 

I'm not sure, but i think whole 5th gen clutch kit will do. I don't think anything else will be needed.
I get off work at 1 am everyday except saturday so 2 am is my usual computing hour

 

what do you do for work man?

 

I print newspapers.
one of the first to read freshest news

 

damn
you must know all of the news before everyon does haha

 

I'm doing a 5spd swap with my 4th gen and putting a 2000 trans in. Can I reuse my 4th gen auto axles?

 

I'm sure your joking, but I'm also sure the answer is no.

 

Yeah, dumb question. I was clinging to hope that I wouldn't have to order new ones. *sigh*

 

Maximus_95 you brazilian...me too.

 

How the heck did you find out im from brazil? i dont think its in my profile. cool

 

maybe it's because i don't have abs and you guys do, but that's the only possiblility i can think of.

i DID this swap, just finished two days ago, and the 4th gen axle physically DOES NOT FIT into the 5th gen tranny. the end of the axle that goes into the tranny is NOT even close to the same. but as soon as i got a 5th gen axle, it worked perfectly. i don't know if the axles are different for cars with abs, but unless they are, you CANNOT use the 4th gen axle.

question for you guys who said it works: in the middle of your driver's side axle, are there two rubber bushings (for lack of a better term...) butted up against each other? that's what my 5th gen axle looked like, but the 4th gen was totally different.

 

If I understand you correctly, those are harmonic dampeners. They kind've look like big rubber rings on either side of the CV joint? Yea, some remag's vs factory OEM suppliers install those, some don't. Makes no difference really...

I think that's what you're describing anyway...

 

The only difference between ABS and non ABS axles is the ABS ring, the ABS ring doesn't affect fitment it is just the signal pickup for the ABS sensors (if you car has them) if your car doesn't have ABS, you can still use an ABS axle.

I haven't got any explanation for what happened in your swap, but it's contrary to what others who have done the swap have found.

 

well, sorry if i blew up at anyone but all i know is that the axle that came out of my 4th gen tranny would not fit into my new tranny at all, and after 2 days of working on or around that, i was kinda pissed. i don't understand why it didn't work either, but i can say, 100%, that there's nothing i could have done to make my old axle work- the axles were TOTALLY different. if anybody DOES have an explanation, i'd really like to hear it.

 

Did you buy an 01 AE, I30t or Canadian Max trans? If so, it's an LSD...that may explain it...I dunno for sure.

 

there was a difference on third gens in their axels...depending on if you had an LSD or not, that may have been the difference, as it affected the driver side axle pattern...not sure if this is true on 4th gens
SO changing from an old transmission that may not have had an LSD to a new one which did, or vice versa, would make the old axle not fit into its new home...congrats by the way :-D

 

nope, both trannies were open diff., the new one was off a 2000, "us-spec" maxima (not i30).

k2a2b: thanks.

 

well i dont understand y u are so pissed or w/e becuase when we did my friends 4th gen with a 5th gen trans the axles worked fine. and u say u spent 2 days on the axles...why? if it doesnt fit once it wont fit twice. and an axle is only like 60 bux ne ways. at least thats how much i paid for new ones

 

You keep saying they are different, what is "different" about them? Different number/size/shape of splines? Different length? What?

 

all of the above. i meant to take pictures but forgot.

the splined part of the 5th gen axle was shorter than on the 4th gen, and the splines were "steeper." (i.e., the splines on the 4th gen axle were at approx. a 40* angle to end of the axle, whereas on the 5th gen, it was approx. a 25* angle). i'm not sure right off hand about the rest. the entire axle, really, looked very different than the old one, although i realize that only the inside end matters as far as it fitting into the tranny.

creative: we did the passenger side axle, and when the driver's side didn't work immediately we decided to finish up everything else that we could under the hood and on the passenger side. we came back to the driver's side axle and tried everything we could to make it work (we thought maybe we should compress the c-clip more to make it slide into the tranny, etc.). since it wouldn't work no matter what we did, we had to drive an hour each way to go buy a new axle, then put that in and finish up that side of the car, refill tranny fluid, etc. i was pissed because i was given advice and, based on MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, that advice was wrong. fifty bucks for a new axle or another day and a half working on the car isn't the issue, it's that i got advice that could have seriously screwed me over. a lot of people on forums like this are inclined to give advice based on what they've heard, not personal experience, and it really bothers me that i might have gotten advice like that.

 

When I did my 5th gen tranny swap, both my axles fit fine. The only thing I can think of is the fact that you do have a LSD tranny. Just because its US spec doesn't rule out the fact that it could have been pulled out of a AE 5spd. There are numerous people who have done this swap and had no problems. See if there are any type of numbers on the tranny that we may be able to match for tranny code.

 

You get what you pay for? If you want professional answers then pay the $$'s... No sane person puts 100% faith in whats written on the Internet or anywhere for that matter

 

Also its one thing to give advice and its another to take that advice and do what you want with it, nobody made you do this swap, noone told you that you have to get a 5th gen tranny when a 4th will do. You chose to do this swap and you followed advice that up to this moment and probably long after this thread that people would continue to follow and swap 5th gen trannies with no problems. Please don't come on and b*tch about something that many of us have no control over. We're all here to help in one way or another, the info you get here or anywhere you should use at your own discretion. Simple as that.

 

Finally get use this smile!

 

Hey guys im thinking as well to do this tranny swap on my car. My transmission whines so loud its very annoying. Is there anything besides the transmission that i have to buy? Also up to what year tranny would fit on my fourth gen. I was gonna do a 3.5 swap but maybe next year my current tranny has got to go. Anyones help would be appreciated. Thnx!

 

so why didn't you take any pictures of both axels? It would have helped us to figure out the problem, and prevent other users from having the same thing happen (such as me who might be doing a 5th gen tranny swap soon)

 

which is why i started the thread. i don't know where my problems came from, but if it happened to me, it could happen to someone else, and i wanted to get the fact out there that despite what everyone seems to say/think, there is still the possibility that you'll need a new axle.

killervq: i've been given bad advice by "professionals" so many times that i'd just as soon trust someone posting on an internet forum.

chickan: learn to read. i said that i FORGOT because i needed to put my car together after spending five days on a job that should have taken two. if you can't figure out the differences between the axles from what i've already posted, maybe you should go back to middle school and get literate. if you seriously need advice about this, i'd be more than happy to help, but don't ***** at me about dumb **** like taking pictures of axles.


p.s. jcy98, READ before you come in here treating me like a moron; the tranny was off a 2000 maxima, that means it COULD NOT HAVE BEEN an ae lsd tranny. hell, the AXLE came off a 2000, too! if there were any 2000 maxes in the us that had lsd that i'm not aware of, by all means tell me, but it was not an ae.

 

You can easily tell an LSD axle from a normal one by the fact that it has two distinct sets of splines on it. It has one set, and then the axle gets thicker, and there is another set.

 

Anything else? I told you off cause you deserved it.