Quote:
Originally Posted by Attacking Mid
... It's important to use the right grease depending on the CV joint style. Rzeppa joints typically have 6 large balls and require a moly-infused high pressure grease. Tripod joints (typically used on the inner joints) require a much thinner grease - usually a polyurea grease. You can buy the specific greases from companies like GKN and some car manufacturers (Honda sells it). I ended up going to a John Deere implement dealer to find the polyurea grease in quantity at a reasonable price...
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I bought the GKN boot kits (around $15 each, I'll guess). GKN is the OES for these parts. The kits come with a new boot, 2x 80g packets of grease (BTW, the spec from the Bentley is for 80g per joint, so the kits come with 2x as much grease as needed), c-clips (2 types, you need one), an axle nut, and the hose clamps. Same grease in the inner vs. outer boot kits.
Part numbers for the kits (2001 3.0i front axles, inner and outer): 31607507402, 31607565315. GKN-304206 is for one of the two.
So in that case, I figured GKN knew what grease was required and I just used what they supplied.
I know from my Honda, they originally specified two very different types of grease for inner vs. outer, but later released a new single grease that supersedes both of them. So maybe GKN has done this?
It makes sense that they would be different - very different joint styles, one is near the brakes (hot) and flexes a lot (steering), the other is in-board near the transaxle or differential with pretty steady temperature and much less motion.
At the low price involved, I'm not worried about the type of grease.
I AM worried about avoiding an impossible step in the process, though. That's why I prefer the boots-only method.
Here's that 30-minute (not including reading time) thread, at my post, which is followed by some good discussion on options.
https://xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-forums/...ml#post1135021
I'm not worried about getting the axle nut off, it's getting the axle end out of the hub without using a sledge hammer or the jaws of life. Plenty of stories on here about problems with that. Surely successful most of the time, like most things. But also, I hardly ever use a hammer on my suspension and bearings; I also seem to get a lot more mileage out of suspension components than most; correlated?
Taking a possibly longer path to avoid the land mines.
See this great thread, which contains this example along with a lot of other good info:
quote: "Got into my CV boot replacement project today. Got the axle nut off and can't get the splined shaft out of the hub. No amount of beating will budge it."
And the only follow-up was a full retreat and re-assembly.
https://xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-forums/...ml#post1150519
And yeah, if you're paying someone else to do this, you may not even have the option to have boots only replaced.