I looked under my 997 turbo last night for the first time and have some questions. Why does it look like the wheels are being driven by these very skinny flimsy looking drive shafts. I think they are called cv joints? A car with all this power makes me wonder how these things dont snap? I presume even more powerful vehicles have these cv joints spinning the wheels and i was just curious to how they can handle so much abuse?

 

Under hard launching conditions don't these come under serious stress? I would expect them to be much thicker

 

Those would be called axle shafts, if you do not know the name I doubt you will ever break them.

 

I've broken a cv joint once on the passengers side...The dealer covered it under warranty and said it's very rare for them to fail... Especially at lower mileage...

 

What does not knowing the name of the part have to do with it ever breaking?

 

spooling....

Yes...the driveshafts on these cars are attached to the hub and gearbox on these cars using a CV joints (constant velocity). They are perfectly strong enough to handle both stock power levels and even some pretty heavily upgraded power levels as well.

At much higher power levels, the axels themselves are prone to breaking, but the CV joints generally still hold up.