hcaulfield57

Hi all,

My passenger side outer CV boot was torn (who knows how long, bought the car like this), finally pulled both axles today. I've got two main questions:

1) I stupidly took off the inner CV joint without marking where it went on the rollers and spider. I was very careful about marking which roller went where on the spider, but neglected to mark the inner CV joint. I noticed in the FSM that it tells you to do this, and I'm wondering, am I hosed here? Can I just put the inner CV joint back on however, or am I going to run into problems? I was hoping to salvage the entire axle and am hoping I don't have to purchase another now. If the axle will be out of balance when I put it back together will I just have to purchase another?

2) Can you disassemble the outer CV joint? The FSM states you can't, but is it telling the truth or not? The only reason I want to is because that was the side that was ripped and I'm afraid contamination may have entered the joint. I don't have any clunking, clicking or any bad noises when turning, so I've assumed that I can rebuild the axle. Should I just pack the joint with grease and call it a day, or can I take the joint apart? I've seen videos of how to do it online, so that's not the question, just whether it will screw something up or not.

Thanks!

94 Civic Si

Not sure what vehicle you are working on, but why not just go get a set of re-man'd CV shafts at the local parts store?

hcaulfield57

Sorry, neglected to state that.

This is a 93' Civic DX manual hatchback with stock D15B7 and transmission. My reason for not wanting to purchase axles through an aftermarket vendor is that I was hoping to retain the OEM reliability, I've seen some say that aftermarket axles (I don't know whether they're re-manufactured or not) do not last long. Also, I was hoping for the experience of rebuilding them myself. While I have the roller-bearings and spider matched up, I'm concerned that I won't be able to reinstall the CV-joint housing in the correct orientation. I suppose I have a 1 in 3 chance of doing it correctly though.

jooky5

way too much work to do these. i have long stopped working on them and just slap in a new set.. Dirt cheap, not worth my time

LiteraCola

+1 on replacing them. If you want experience rebuilding stuff, you should probably look somewhere else. Maybe a transmission or something actually worth the time. Ask me how I know....

hcaulfield57

Where would I buy re-manufactured OEM?

94 Civic Si

https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/NMD946021

hcaulfield57

Thanks for the replies so far everyone. Seems like the universal consensus is just to buy re-manufactured axles.

Unfortunately, I really had my heart set on rebuilding them, from anyone who has gone this route could they share their perspective on question #1, with regards to the CV-joint housing orientation? I'm not disagreeing with the advice regarding re-manufactured axles, in fact that's mostly what searching turned up, but I do like to do things the hard way often just to learn something. I also already bought the OEM boot set for both sides which was I think around $30 each.

LiteraCola

You sound like my girlfriend. Sheesh! But I'm with ya on that. I'd rather fix **** myself rather than buy new. Just last night I repaired a Lion Guard playset for my 3 year old. It was presumed to be broken and was headed for the trash. "Hi, my name's Jesse, and I have a problem. I tinker with everything."

TomCat39

I can't help you with rebuilding your axles. I just wanted to state, I did brand new aftermarket axles for 100 bucks per axle with limited lifetime warranty.

It was my understanding the cost to rebuild is near that so really, new for that price just seems like the better option now a days.

You don't even see axle rebuild shops anymore as it's just not cost effective from what I've been told.

Best of luck in your project though, sounds like you will have fun regardless of economics.

tamboo

raxles if you have $ to burn,
if not cardone select has lifetime warranty.
also like empire, has harmonic balancer that most dont and made well
but only 1 year warranty. 8(

hcaulfield57

Hi all,

I had to suck up my pride and purchase some aftermarket axles. I ended up going with Cardone off of RockAuto. I decided to just buy some new ones for a few reasons, 1) the passenger side outer CV joint has probably been running with a torn boot for a very long time. The car was like that when I purchased it about 2,000 miles ago, and I'm sure it was like that for much longer. The joint had a lot of play in it, and I question whether repacking it would have done much. 2) I opened up the driver side axle and found that it was aftermarket, and just gave up at that point. I also am doing wheel bearings and upper and lower ball joints right now, so I didn't need one more thing to screw around with.

Thanks for the input everyone, looks like I caved. Oh well.