Hi (Oh God its a Newbie!) Question about the mysterious drivesahft damper....

[Steve_H_]

Hello people, I have been having fun and games with my old Golf 1.6 driver (Ooooooh feel the lack of power!!!!). At about 2 in the morning the weekend before last I suffered a driveshaft failure. Once I got the thing home I discovered that the circlip had detached itself from the end of the shaft releasing the CV joint.
After much faffing about I came to the conclusion that the incident has damaged the splines on the both the CV joint and the shaft and I need to replace the whole unit. The thing is the new shaft hasn't got a damper unit fitted, the good old Haynes book of lies suggest I should swap it over. To be honest I really don't want to take apart the new shaft to fit a crappy piece of doughnut shaped plastic from the old unit.

Having done a bit of a search on driveshafts and related threads I have come across the odd comment but nothing much conclusive, can anyone fill me in on if I should try and transfer it and what on earth its supposed to do (stop the Earth spinning backwards perchance or maybe ward off evil spirits?)

Cheers
Steve       

[Diamond Hell]

Run it without and see what happens.  The worst is that you'll get minging vibrations through the car.  The best is you'll not get anything.

Bear in mind that when producing these cars VW took a lot of care to ensure they operated well in virtually all conditions.  You may never encounter the conditions that would have made the driveshaft vibrate, but at some point in the development of the car the engineers decided they needed a damper on that driveshaft, to stop it vibrating under certain conditions, so that's what it got.  I removed a large block of clearly OE-spec steel from the subframe of a Passat a couple of weeks ago - I suspect that was to stop vibrations, too.

[...joe]

don't worry about it, i did get told the reason for the damper being there but i've forgotten. to be honest its nothing important. if you're that bothered try going to vw and getting a new one.

[rubjonny]

my 8v GTI has never had one, and its not blown up and killed me yet 

[golf mk2 tornado red]

its a balance weight for the shaft to stop vibrations.

dont worry about it you wont feel it and it wont hurt anything