Cayenne, Touareg and Audi Q7 propshafts
The Porsche Cayenne, VW Touareg and the Audi Q7 were a joint venture by the Volkswagen Group to build an off road sports utility vehicle. Obviously the more popular of the three is the VW Touareg this is due to the VW being the more affordable vehicle both new and in the second hand market. Each vehicle has its own particular styling and engines but fundamentally they have the same driveline, hence the same propshaft.
We first started to see these propshafts for repair in 2006. Some of the vehicles had as little as 50,000 miles on the clock before the centre bearing failed. This, as I’m sure you’ll agree isn’t very good for a vehicle of this age or marque. Our initial reaction was to replace the centre bearing but on through examination we found that the bearing itself had not failed but the rubber surrounding the bearing had come away from its casing (plenty of videos and pictures of this on the internet).
This lead us to believe that the problem wasn’t with the bearing but it was with something else on the propshaft causing the bearing failure.
After lots of disassembling, reassembling, balancing, parts swapping and finally road testing we found that there was a something odd with the CV joint that sits behind the centre bearing. It caused the propshaft to run in a non concentric manner which gradually tore the bearing away from its casing. We couldn’t pin point the exact problem but when we took the CV joint out of the build of the propshaft the problem no longer occurred. We set about re manufacturing the propshaft to extend its life span. As far as we know the test vehicle from 2006 is still running strong.
In short, replacing the bearing is only a short term solution but we do have plenty in stock if you wish to go down this route.
We have in stock re manufactured exchange propshafts for all three vehicles at both our Chorley and Salford workshops.
If you would like any more information then please give us a call.
Common part numbers are
955.421.020.13
955.421.020.15
7LO 521 102 B/D/G/H/M/N
7L6 521 102 G/J/M/P
7L6 521 102 B/C/D/E/F/H/N/Q
If you are unsure on the part number you can download and fill in a Touareg/Cayenne Tech sheet with lengths from our website and send it to us by clicking here