beating a dead horse

[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 :-)