This weekend I removed the bevel gear in my 1998 V70 AWD.

I mentioned that I might think about this some time ago when I started experiencing problems with it:
http://www.brickboard.com/AWD/volvo/1356332/V70/front_end_whine.html

As I mentioned in that posting, I came across this thread on VolvoXC about removing the bevel gear completely:
http://www.brickboard.com/AWD/volvo/1356332/V70/front_end_whine.html

At first I thought the volvoxc poster described replacing his pass side driveshaft with one from a FWD car, but as it turns out he actually just used the regular one from his AWD. The driveshaft on the AWD car actually passes all the way through the bevel gear and mates into the transmission directly. The bevel gear gets it's power from a small shaft that fits around the pass side driveshaft and splines into the bevel gear's power-transfer assembly.

I did all this because I had to replace the pass side ball joint. I had to take the ball joint out, so I was most of the way to getting the driveshaft out anyway, and I wanted to replace the outer boot (I bought the boots sometime ago, waiting for the right opportunity to get to it).

I pulled the control arm out and took the driveshaft out of the hub assembly, unbolted the carrier bearing and pulled the driveshaft out of the car. Easy.

Then I removed the vibration damper and drained the oil out of the bevel gear through the drain I installed some time ago.

Then I started unbolting the bevel gear. There are 5 bolts holding the bevel gear to the transmission, all 14mm. The two "on top" of the bevel gear housing were best reached with extensions from the pass side, over the top of the housing. It was helpful that I already removed the driveshaft.

The bevel gear itself then came out with only mild finangling.

When I looked this procedure up in VADIS it specified that I would need to put an engine lifting device on top of the strut towers and lower the sub-frame and undo the exhaust and all this... total balogney.

After that I just put it all together in reverse. I greased everything up good to keep the nasty moisture away from things - splines and driveshaft, trans seal, etc - anything that I didn't really want the water on).

I also used my old CV boot to make a boot to cover the interface between the driveshaft and the small shaft for the bevel gear (which stays put in the transmission after the bevel gear is removed). This was not hard at all and I greatly recommend this to anyone trying this for themselves. Basically I just found one of the 'valleys' in the 'bellows' part of the boot that was approx the same diameter as the small bevel gear shaft and trimmed the boot using a pair of scissors a little up the next bellow so that I could fasten the boot to the shaft using a zip-tie. The other end was already the right size for the driveshaft given that it came off the driveshaft to begin with :) It was easy. I tried to recycle an old inner tie-rod boot, but it wasn't big enough. CV boots work well. I'll get a picture of this if I can remember to think of it the next time I'm under there.

There was a small metal bracket supporting the exhaust that should probably be fastened by shimming out with washers (to replicate the depth of the bevel gear housing that is now gone.

Overall the job was not that bad, and now I'm a-bunch-of-pounds lighter (maybe 50? I'm really bad at judging weight...) and I have the bevel gear out so I can get it checked out and possibly rebuilt at a transmission shop.

So if you've got an AWD that you have already removed the prop shaft from (making it a FWD) and you're up to the task of removing the pass-side driveshaft, it's a short step to go the extra mile and remove the bevel gear altogether if you so choose.


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1998 V70 AWD Turbo 195k+