shutuprichard551

Ok so today I found out that not only one but both of my CV boots are broken, so im going to replace both axles but need help on how.
I found some from two stores by me, one brand is called Master Pro and its from O'Reillys for $59.99, and the others are from AutoZone and they have several brands Duralast Reman, Duralast New, and Cardone Reman.

Which brand is the best?
I do plan to do an engine swap and turboing it, if that makes any difference.

alphalanos

autozone axles are pretty crappy, but if youre going to do a swap in the future it might be a good idea. OEMs are around $250 each and thats not even the full axle. The procedure is not hard but you will probably run into issues.

You should have a large hammer, pb blaster, a breaker bar and a 3'+ pipe to put on the end or an impact gun, jack, jackstands, your new axle AND new axle nuts, a large screwdriver to stake/unstake the nut, and a large prybar to get the axles out of the trans.

To do it you need to break the axle nuts loose with the car on the ground. first you have to unstake the axle nut with a large screwdriver and hammer. I did it with a 2" breaker bar, and the handle to my craftsman pro jack on the end, and someone in the car holding the brake. Im 170lbs and it took basically all my strength and weight to break it loose. So if your smaller than that it might be really hard.

After that jack it up, drain the trans. fluid. pop the lower ball joint, I use a small puller from autozone made for compact cars, works great. Remove the shock fork bolt and pinch bolt. this allows you to get the axle out more easily. you may need to tap on the end of the spline in the hub to get it out. Use the prybar to pop the inner spline from the trans.

After that you just reverse it. Getting the axle back in can be hard just make sure its not jammed and that it has a C clip on the end and push. make sure to restake the axle nut and torque it to 130ft lbs.

thumper64

The ball joints and tie rod are the hardest part of swapping axles. A couple whacks with a hammer will get the upper joint and tie rod end. There's a trick involving a 1/2" drive Craftsman wrench for the lower.

I've done axles and joints enough now that if you need help, PM me, I'll do whatever I can.

shutuprichard551

What I really need to know is what brand to buy?

shutuprichard551

bump

nothing_shocking

Well if you're wanting to use the axles you buy after you boost, you also have to take into account how much power you're going for. If you're wanting a good chunk of power, just get beefy axles now and be done.

shutuprichard551

yeah ok so what would be beefy axles?

Allurian

Just buy axles from either place. They both come with a lifetime warranty.

R666_EK

x2

If they break, get em replaced. If they don't, good.

Relic1

after the fourth axle in two months I stopped using swapping out the cheaper autozone axles and picked up a Napa axle, oddly the other side's axle worked fine with the first Autozone rebuilt one. (it really is a hit or miss to get a good one from them, more often miss though)

O'Reillys - I don't have a lot of experience with, they just opened a store near me and I haven't had a need to go in there for anything yet.

Napa axles (the new ones) are good the first time, but are more $$.

so it depends, if you want to have it right the first time and don't have a lot of time to screw with it, it will cost you a little more. If you don't mind messing with axles a few time to get it right, then go for the autozone axles. Wildcard (at least to me) would be O'Reillys.

like usual, good, fast, cheap - pick two. since speed is fixed, good and cheap are the factors you get to mess with...

shutuprichard551

ok well i found out that napa has remanufactured axles for $45 and new ones for $95 both with a 3 year warranty, and O'Reillys has remanufactured axles for $60 and new ones for $70 but both with a lifetime warranty.

I cant decide which ones to get?

R666_EK

I would go with the ones with the lifetime warranty. Basically spending $15 or $25 more for a lifetime warranty.

Not a bad deal if you ask me.

czissman

Long Answer
The trouble with low-cost lifetime warranty parts is that the warranty is often a marketing gimmick to convince you to buy what is essentially a low quality product. The manufacturer knows that most people loose their receipts or otherwise don't bother bringing bad parts back in for warranty replacement, because if a junk part fails early, who's going to want to put the same junk part back in? More likely, the next time you go through all the work to replace the item, you'll pony-up the extra money to buy a good quality part.

SO... how much is your time worth to you? How important is it to you to avoid the frustration of having to do the work twice? How badly do you want to avoid a possible breakdown or possibly a bad accident?

There are places where buying cheap lifetime products makes sense, but I think it's false economy when it comes to suspension and driveline components that take a *lot* of time and effort to replace, and can have dire consequences if they fail.

Short Answer
When it comes to critical parts like driveline and suspension, your first priority should always be to shop for quality first, price second, and warranty third.

Cheapest Parts Source
Withouth a doubt, the lowest-price parts source I've found is rockauto.com.

R666_EK

I don't know about you, but an axle replacement is CAKE. Its no where near "A LOT" of work.

Even "cheap" replacements work just fine. I've always replaced with cheap remans from an auto parts store.

The fact that it comes with a lifetime warranty is a plus. Gimmick or no. The warranty is still there.

Arcitekt

a good excuse to purchase some chromoly drive shafts

czissman

To someone who likes to work on their cars and does it a lot, changing an axle may be easy. To those who do it only because they have to--and have never done it before--it's far from easy and is indeed "a lot" of work. I've not even turned a wrench on this project yet and I've got more than four hours of research into diagnosing the problem and researching how to fix it.

I'm not suggesting that a lifetime warranty is a bad thing, I'm suggesting that a lifetime warranty as a marketing gimmick to drive the sales of low-quality parts is a bad thing.

Once I replace the axle in my gf's car, I don't want to have to do it again for at least another 100,000 miles, considering she got 175,000 miles from the original one.

Kista20

the boots on my 97 hx had slits in them and everytime it was at the honda dealer (warranty work only) they always had to tell me about them but needless to say I drove at least another 75k miles till the outer boot on the driver's side eventually burst open but I had bought a used set of oem axles with 50k miles from someone that did a swap for when mine went bad so I figured I should be able to go at least another 100k miles no problem since I easily gotten 150k out of the first set. It took me prob 4-5 hours to do the job but I did both sides and took my time, eat, etc... if you have a place to do it and the tools it's not actually that hard to do. The hardest thing is breaking the 32mm axle nut loose which is a lot easier if you have an air gun.