beating a dead horse

[Ascinder]

Depending on how many miles you have you could either replace the boot or thew whole axle. Personally, I'd almost always do the boot. Boots are cheap, axles aren't. All you need to do is clean out the CV and make sure there isn't any debris inside before you put on the new boot. These things last almost forever if properly maintained and aren't overtaxed (lifting and wheeling).

[phx99blackvx]

Thanks ascinder for the reply, I have 88,000 miles. All stock, no hard off roading since Ive owned it, I am the 2nd owner, purchased it with 78K on, do not know the entire history, but I does not look like it has seen much Off road duty as it was in great shape when I got. I just replaced the back brakes, original, today, the front had well over half thickness, I just cant attest if they are original or not

[Ascinder]

There are people on here with over 200K miles on stock CVs, so that was where I was coming from with just replacing the boot. Sounds like you got a good rig. I don't know if you knew or not but there are several writeups on here by Triathlete and I think maybe Marlin did one too on replacing your CV boots without totally removing them. Good luck!

[MSHardeman]

I would agree with Ascinder. Get into the CV, give it a good cleaning and check to see if anything is marked up. If everything looks good, just repack it with grease and put a new boot on it.

I have been having some issues with my driver side inner CV and have been having a bear of a time finding a replacement axle. The outer axle (from the inner CV to the wheel) is relatively easy to find and EMPI makes a replacement that you can get for $70. The part number is 80-3619 ( http://www.jcwhitney.com/new-fwd-dri...41&zmap=548592 ) and they are super easy to find. Triathlete has replaced his axles with these and says that he hasn't had any problems with them so far.

If you are looking to replace the whole axle all the way in to the third member let me know because that's what I have been up against, and with the help of a few members here I have finally pulled all of the part numbers together to get that done.

[Triathlete]

Just a note...your stock CV's are way stronger than anything you will get at Pepboys, Checkers, Autozone etc. I would go the boot route first.
Yes it is not much extra work to replace the whole thing but you will be losing the quality of the factory shafts. just my .02.

[tom4bren]

If your CV isn't making noise then just replacing the boot is all that is required. Your friend is almost right in that you'll be quite a ways into replacing the entire axle assembly but if you use the MechaTech installation instructions in the Download section, you'll only be about 60% of the way to axle replacement rather than 90% like he's estimating.

The other factor is $$$. Axles are expensive if you can find one at all. A set of 4 boots will only set you back about $150. Even if you find a set of used axles, you should probably replace the boots anyway.

[LittleBeast]

A set of 4 boots will only set you back about $150.

UH..... www.rockauto.com :-) I got 4 boots for around $40 (including shipping) and they were at my door in 3-4 days!!!!!

$8.85 http://www.rockauto.com/catalog/moreinfo.php?pk=1029702
or $11.09 http://www.rockauto.com/catalog/moreinfo.php?pk=1029693
I have bought lots of different ones and Mecatech are NO better than these at all! Only the stock boots are better in quality, but you will pay ten times as much for them. As far as I can tell there really is not much difference if any at all for all the CV Boots RockAuto offers for the VX.

Changing boots is very easy, it is just messy. If I was closer I could walk you through the process and I am confident anyone could do this themselves, good luck!

But if you have someone do this for you make sure they do not charge anymore than 2 hours labor and MAKE sure they are not planning on charging you anymore than $50 for parts or you should just order your own boots and drop them off. If you are just going to replace that one side just get 2 boots or order 4 for backups for the other side while they are still under $9 at RockAuto :-)