CV boots

[chickenhunterbob]

Rotated tires today, after changing oil, figured ready for a week of turkey hunting and notice the psgr side outer CV boot completely separated at the swage ring, driver side cut through about half way.

I have a GM service manual, and a Haynes, and have scoped out R&R of the axles and whatnot, and I'm up to it, there are differences though, the Haynes seems to suggest you can pop the old swage ring off the race and re-use it by tapping it on to the race over a new boot, GM manual says to chisel it of and discard.

Also Haynes says that replacement (rebuilt) axle assemblies (inner and outer CV, with boots) are available, might be a good idea? I'll check out the price tomorrow...

My heap has 360,000 km, never noticed any strange front end noise or vibration, last time I rotated the tires was 10,000 km ago, psgr side no doubt has hauled in quite a bit of grit, but if I can get away with cleaning up and re-greasing the CV with a new boot and use the old swage ring, I suspect that would be my preference.

Anybody with experience on this?

[chickenhunterbob]

Never mind, mission accomplished.

The CV joint is a pretty nifty deal, like a puzzle, mine were both fine inside, tore them apart and repacked with grease, the new CV boot kit came with a tube of CV joint grease and clamps for the boots, and I had to buy a clamp crimper.

Also changed one upper ball joint, the inner and outer tie rod ends, and sleeve clamps, I just could not see even trying to loosen the clamp bolts on the old ones, and installed new pitman arm and idler arm.

$950.00 total for parts including the pitman arm puller and crimper for the CV boots, took me 3 days.

Pitman arm to steering gear and that %^$(%) ball joint were the hardest part and also breaking the outer axle nuts, that took a 3 foot snipe on my breaker bar.

I went to bed last night thinking the pitman arm may stay on until the alignment tomorrow, but finally beat it this morning after soaking overnight with WD-40, and beating with a hammer. (first puller I had was covered on warranty, remember. I use a 3 foot snipe...)

The upper ball joint rivets were a bugger too, I had broke off a couple of drill bits in the rivets, and had to take off the upper control arm to the drill press, in retrospect would have been easier to do this in the first place.

No play in the steering now, haha!!

Off to the shop for alignment tomorrow, and get them to check the torque on my pitman arm nut, it's supposed to be 184 lb ft, but I only had a crescent wrench to tighten it, so I'm fairly sure needs another 100 or so LOL.