Drive Shaft Wear

I pulled an OEM junkyard half-shaft to rebuild for a project car that has a loose aftermarket axle on it. The outer was good but the inner needed a boot (joint was OK) and I found that the joint (inner) was somewhat loose on the splines. When I removed the circlip, the joint would slide off the splines. My experience with these is that they are a tight fit and need to be driven on/off with a mallet usually. Are worn splines an issue? The joint and shaft appear to be OEM VW.
Thanks

Some are tighter than others. So long as it does not "wobble" it should be fine. You can always buy a new inner joint if need be.

Splines on my inner on one of my golfs were shot, no idea why but they were pretty worn and causing a lot of very bad noise. It was a left side, not sure if it takes more abuse or that.

The times I have done an r&r on an inner CV joint, they weren't tight enough to have to hammer anything. Probably it is something caused by normal wear, so an application of good grease when installing will do you well. I agree with OH: if there's no wobble (and no pits in the races) you should be fine.

Cheers,

PH

Thanks folks. I’ll put a new inner on and run it. Junkyard charged me $8 for it.