On Sun, 30 Nov 2003 02:36:10 GMT, Crikey Schmikey <no@spam.com> wrote:

>Hello,
>
>With the previous three new cars I've owned, all front-wheel drive, I
>drove them well past 100K mi. with each of them. But with all of
>them, I've had to replace the CV joints for the same reason: the boots
>dry out and crack, the grease comes out, and the dirt gets in.

Yup, it happens.

>Now, with my relatively new car, I wish to be able to avoid or prevent
>that from happening again, so I did some research on CV joint
>maintenance, and everything I've read talked about what to do when the
>boots crack. Nothing about how to prolong their life or prevent those
>boots from cracking.

The boots are in a really harsh environment. Eventually, they go. If
you inspect them regularly you can sometimes replace the boot itself
before damage occurs to the joint, but it's not really worth it. I
figure that if the boot is torn, I don't want to mess with it, it's
not worth spending $25 for a new boot when I could spend $60 and have
a known good remanufactured unit and not have to deal with the mess of
just replacing the boot.

I took a picture of someone elses nightmare.. They were changing just
the boots... http://mailsack.org/cv.jpg Looks messy..

>The cost of the parts really isn't a problem, but you guys probably
>know, it's a very labour intensive and time consuming repaire.

Swapping the CV axles typically isn't a big deal. Pull the wheels,
knuckles, remove a couple of bolts holding the unit in, and pull
straight out. Air hammer is sometimes helpful breaking the steering
knuckle loose. Thats all it was on a Nissan Altima I worked on
semi-recently. Total time to swap both axles was less than 2 hours.

>What's rather preplexing to me is that I read often how some people
>who've put on >150K mi. on their previous cars, some having owned
>about 5 or 6 different cars in the past and even living in northeast,
>and never had a CV joint problem due to the boots cracking or failing,
>let alone the CV joints itself going bad.

Luck?


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