CV AXLE REPLACEMENT

[civdiv99]

Paid $54 US plus a few bucks shipping for complete axle end-to-end from rockauto.com. Axle is a "Cardone," made in China of course. It fit great, still works great coming up on a year later, smooth at 100+ mph, etc. I'd forgotten all about it until I read your post. Dunno what you can access that's economically equivalent but I've been more than happy with the non-OEM parts I've installed - brakes, the axle - ('cause I let the torn boot go too long), suspension stuff, fluids, various odds and ends. I don't spend OEM $$ for anything unless there's no readily apparent option otherwise.

As far as the job goes - I did the passenger side in about 45 min on a floor jack. What I did was remove the thrust arm at its chassis front mounting bolt, the swing arm at its chassis mounting bolt, the ABS clip and connector, the caliper & pads as an assy and set it on a little block back out of the way but not under tension, the sway bar links (get more room thataway, too). Since replacing the entire axle which came with it's own stake nut, I just smacked the end of the axle out of the spindle, then removed the 2 strut bolts and set the whole spindle assy with arms and all aside. I suggest not being too awfully shy with the axle smacking - you'll be able to ramp up the hammer size and swing force until you see the axle begin to move, then that'll be good enough as it'll move a bit further each hit. Scoot under and pop the axle out of the front diff. There's a clip that comes with it. I used a large flat screwdriver on the inner part of the axle. One or 2 smacks with 16 oz hammer was enough to pop it free and I didn't pry on the aluminum surface with the seal (once under there you'll see how snug the gap is and so forth). to put in the new one I just slid it into place and shoved "moderately." If it doesn't snick into place, pull out until rotates and snick again. I didn't hammer on anything regarding the now one. Just a few wiggles and test shoves until the snap ring was apparently happy and in it went. Reassemble reverse of assembly. All good.

Oh, some may discuss the axle nut. I had the wife stomp on the brake pedal and I used a 6-sided "non-metric" socket (don't remember the size, but there is a common inch-size that fit it close enough to work well. I slipped on a 4' pipe over the life-time warranty breaker bar attached to said socket and it was a piece-of-cake. There's a torque spec when you reinstall. I used the sometimes widely accepted scientific process known as: "yep, that feels about right, stake'r down."