I changed my half shafts today, which was the main cause of my vibration problem. I bought these SurTrack MZ-8028 half shafts from Rockauto and installed them in July 2017. The Surtrack half shafts were complete crap that were "Made in China". I had slightly over 17,000 miles on these shafts. They held up okay for maybe the first year then they started causing a lot of vibration. Under 40-50 mph they were okay, but faster than that they would cause vibrations. All the CV joints were shot, but the inner CV joints were the worst. I had radial (i.e., up and down) play in all the CV joints, but the inner were by far the worst. The Chinese metallurgy in these SurTrack half shafts is very questionable. Beware of this "Made in China" crap! Sure, it's cheap, but if it only lasts a year than what's the point of even buying it? It's SurTrack's quality control that's the issue. I did a Google search on SurTrack and one guy wrote that his half shafts only last a year whereas others said that they had no problems. I replaced my SurTrack half shafts with used '91 AT Vert half shafts that I bought from a guy on this forum last Fall. Big improvement with the original Mazda half shafts. Take this as warning if you're considering buying the SurTrack half shafts as replacements for your FC.

I am attaching a photo of my SurTrack half shafts, which are now in the garbage were they belong. I am also attaching a video of one of my half shafts were the shaft is clamped in a vice as I am moving the CV joint. (I had to shorten this video in order to post it on this forum.) In other words, the CV joint is oscillating rather that rotating, which was causing the vibration while driving. I've never posted a video before so hopefully it will turn out okay.


SurTrack MZ-8028 Half Shafts

 

Good to know! Sometimes it's easy to be drawn in on the RockAuto prices, but I realized I gotta make sure I don't get too greedy and make sure I get legitimate good stuff.

 

Hey, at least they came with a lifetime warranty. Should have sent them back for another set to get another year of driving.

 

Yeah, that thought crossed my mind too. It's too much work replacing these shafts every year. It took me 4-1/2 hrs to do the left side and 2-1/2 hrs for the right side. Those sleeves in the tri-axial floating hubs can sometimes be PITA to dislodge.

 

I still have the original half shafts on my S5T2, but this is good info to know. I've used SurTrack half shafts/CV joints sourced from RockAuto before to replace the failing CV shafts on my kid's jalopies, an '03 Nissan Sentra & an '03 Mazda Protege5. The Sentra has about 160K miles on it now, and the MP5 has about 190K. So far those shafts have lasted about 2~3 years and 30~40K miles on each car, so maybe I'm lucky.

BTW, when I did the Sentra, one of the shafts delivered was the wrong size - clearly it was too long, by almost a full inch, though the SurTrack box & my invoice showed the correct part # for the application. Had to send it back to RockAuto for a replacement, which was free, but what a PITA.

 

Keep your original S5T2 half shafts. If the CV joints ever need to be rebuilt, than just send them to a local axle/drive shaft shop for rebuilding.

IMO, Rockauto is good at mis-boxing parts. In more than one instance, I had this happen to me for a rear caliper.

 

The car's a pleasure to drive again. I might take it on a 300-mile road trip next weekend (June 27-30) to Watkin's Glen for the IMSA Sahlen's 6-hrs of The Glen car race. Mazda usually runs a couple cars for these IMSA races. I'm just keeping an eye on the weather forecast before committing to buy a ticket.