OK so last night i had to chaperon my bros bday party and instead of acting like a parent i thought i would just hangout in the garage and work on the car.

Earlier in the day i went and picked up some redline cv-2 grease, the good stuff. It comes in 390gram containers and each cv needs 150-160 grams , so 1 container is sufficient proveded you can get it all out.

I did the job without removing the axles form the car. The way to do this is to loosen the 6 bolts holding the cv to the diff, undo the lower ball joint on the rear wheel. Undoing the balljoint gives you enough play to be able to pull the cv out of the the diff without removing the axle.

Then i undid the boot bands on the cv, just the larger ones is ok, all you need is a pair of pliers and some brute force and the pop right open (closure is same process).

Then i wiped out all the grease that didnt fall out (used about two rolls of paper) , keep in mind that when you remove the cv housing the rollers will want to fall out, the shop manual actually says to mark the position of each roller relative to the housing ( i didnt do this as there would be no point because of the swap), but i did park the location of each roller relative to where it was attached. Then i cleaned each roller and put them back on. and placed the cv housing back on, and then boot the boot back on with the pliers and the strap.

Remarks-
1. left side grease was significantly darker with noticable pitting on the inside.
2. Right side grease was AOK and inner surfaces looked impeccable.
some pics of the pitting blurry because they are phone pics taken in the dark






Tools and parts required:
1. Torque wrench
2. 14mm socket and wrench for bolts on cv joints
3. 17mm socket for bolts on balljoints
4. 19mm socket for torquing wheel lugs
5. Needle nose pliers for band clamps.
6. Socket extension piece medium sized
7. Redline CV-2 grease
8. Balljoint seperator tool ($15)
9. Jack and jackstands

Tips--
A. to undo cv joint bolts, apply parking brake and do 1-2 bolts at a time, then undo brake and rotate wheel and then apply brake , repeat till all bolts are loosend. This process also helps for torquing them down.

B. To get enougn play with the halfshafts undo lower ball joint and swing hub in toe in direction.

C. To undo boot clamps just get pliers and squeeze them like they are the neck of your sworn enemy.

 

Great post. Thanks for sharing this with us.

Just curious: Why did you decide to replace the CV joints? Were you experiencing any symptoms?

 

yes i was experiencing some pretty bad vibration on acceleration and cornering.

However this swap only removed the bad part of the vibration (75%), now there is still a little vibration on hard acceleratin at speed, and slightly more when cornering. Which leads me to believe that the the left outer cv joint also needs work, im not sure if it can be swapped like the inner ones, im gonna look into it a bit more.

Tommorow im gonna jack up the car again and actually check the torque on everything, as well as do tranny and diff fluid changes. While the car is up i may actually remove the left axle completely and take the outer joint appart to look for wear.

I have two questions:
1. Can anyone tell me if the outer joints can be swapped like the inner ones?

2. Do you think that the pitted side of the once left cv joint (now on right side) is actually in contact with the roller when deccelerating with engine? (i know its in contact when in reverse, but cannot feel it at low speed/throttle)

 

bump, i need to know about those questions i asked

 

I'm sure the answer to #2 is yes. But the torque applied is so low it shouldnt matter at all.

I've never heard of anyone swapping the outer joints and only recently heard of anyone replacing them. Let us know what you find out.

 

hmm thats what i thought.

BTW the part #'s are the same for both right and left inner, as well as right and left outer. (so only two different #'s)

And the shop manual shows how to dissasemble the joints and put them back together. It mentions a special tool and clamping the axle in a and using a slide hammer to seperate the driveshaft from the outer joint.

But instead of rollers i see a splined shaft going into the outer joint , so im not sure if swapping will help.