Hi all,
I was down at the shops before and when i came out, i noticed what looked like grease on my front drivers side rim. When i had i closer look i found a heap of grease on the inside of my wheel and allover the inner wheel arch.
Limped home, took the wheel off and sure enough a split cv boot :cry: .

The CV isn't making any noise so i think it's ok, just the boot itself. Has anyone ever replaced these? How hard are they to do? I realize the drive shaft has to come out, then is it simply - remove old boot and replace?

Any ideas on the price of these?
It's a 96 TE 3.0lt

Cheers

Excellent pick up. Still looks alright, until it's fixed please stay off the puddles.

CV Boots are fairly inexpensive to replace & I believe any competent mechanic workshop can do the job. They're a fairly common part common to most cars across brands, think it's about $60-100 for both front wheels when I had to do my Civic in 2002, please ask for quotes as prices vary alot - suprisingly.

How hard is it to remove the drive shafts?

:badgrin: i dont know about you, but mine cost a bit to get replaced, cause its a mitsi thing that they are a pain to do. just from my experience, and taht was in darwin

They're not hard to do at all. You can do them yourself if you have a bit of mechanical know how, a manual and the parts.

i replaced my whole outer cv joint without taking my driveshaft out, i'm sure you can do the same for a boot.


to replace the boot, the joint needs to come off. basically take the hub off the spline (take off the split pin and undo the huge nut), then you basically need to take the joint off (difficult)... once again, the joint is attachted to the drive shaft using a spline. the boot can be replaced then... to be able to move the hub/steering knuckle around, you'll need to unbolt it from the strut and unbolt the ball joint. i managed to leave the tierod end still joined... also, the brake caliper needs to come off... makes it easier.

now as for getting the cv off the driveshaft... that's another story... my cv joint's ball cage had collapsed so taking the join off was easy... but the inner race for the ball bearings (the bit that attaches to the driveshaft) wouldn't come off... i just ended up cutting into it in three places with the angle grinder at 120 degrees to each cut and smacking it off... but that's not really useful as you wanna keep your joint as a whole.

also, get the correct grease for cv's and use plenty of it in the new boot... the grease is molyb-something-something... i'll know the name when i see/hear it.

anyways, hope this helps...

Cheers,
Bill

Thanks for the replies, i got it fixed today. The CV joint was ok, just needed a new boot and repacked with grease. Took it to a backyard mechanic that just does driveshaft exchange/installs. Cost me $85 and 40mins of my time.
If i ever need to have anything done to the driveshafts/CV joints again, i'm going back to him. He said an exchange driveshaft would cost about $150 and $30 to install.

If any ACT members need CV joints done, let me know and i'll pass on his contact number.

lol Excellent news! I always like a happy ending.

Merry Christmas everyone !