Today's experience changing the CV Axle

[mhopton]

89 Accord LX Auto - 156k - original cv's.

While replacing a piece of the brake system's flex line on Friday afternoon, I noticed a fairly recent tear in the CV Boot on the passenger front. The grease was fairly gunky, so it had probably been torn for awhile but was not yet clicking or making noise.

After reading this thread:

http://www.3geez.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28515

I decided to give it a go. I'm a fairly o.k. mechanic but I like to have good instructions to work with, so I studied the above thread and the haynes manual before deciding to give it a go myself. I figured it'd be a hell of a lot easier to do the whole axle with both new boots than to try and do just a boot, so I picked up a reman axle at NApa, a new bag o' gloves, some tranny fluid, got a big ole cup of coffee, some good tunes and went to work this morning.

Everything was fine til it came time to "pop" the lower ball joint loose. I had a 4" gear puller but all that did was bend and contort even after soaking in WD40 for an hour. So I skipped that step and went straight to the lower fork bolt, which popped right out with no problem. I did unweight the joint by raising the jack up under the disc and used a phillips head screw driver to push the bolt all the way through.

After getting a ball joint tool (looks like a tapered tuning fork), the ball joint separated in two whacks with a hammer. From there I lifted it up out of the lower arm, following the directions in the above thread and swung the knuckle out of the way.

With a large flat blade screw driver, the axle popped right out and the new one went right back in and everything bolted back up in 30 minutes. Even spending an hour on the balljoint before using the right tool, it only took 3 hours. When the other side goes, it'll be an hour and a half at most.

Next: Upper and lower balljoints and tie rod ends....

thanks to whoever you are that wrote that thread. the pics were great! If you are wondering whether you can do this, I guarantee that you can!!

Mike

[Strugglebucket]

so your rebuilt axle doesn't bind? every rebuilt axle i've gotten has clicked. so i use them for awhile and then exchange them under warranty...for another axle with the same problem. gets annoying 'cause tranny fluid is expensive ya know?

[mhopton]

Bind? Nope, it works great so far. I went and did a few lock to lock circles in a big parking lot and no binding, cliking, etc. It seems to be working really well, so far!!

I got the axle at Napa if that helps you any...

[halxi]

Ive never had problems with axles from napa... checkers/autozone are different stories.

The first time i did CV's on my accord it took me about 30 min to get both sides out (dont know how long it took all together, as i was dropping the transmission with a friend).

On my civic, by the time i had taken out/put in the passenger side axle 5 times in one day, it only took 15 minutes from pulling the car into the driveway, to dropping it and pulling it out of the driveway. That day sucked.

I warn you now, upper balljoints/lower ball joints, wheel bearings, and studs are a BITCH. Unless you have access to a good press. Even so, the whole front suspension has to be removed to get the upper control arms off.