DIY CV joint replacement

My CV joints were clicking when turning hard at slow speed for about 13 years, maybe longer. The axle boots were torn and the CV bearings were clearly visible though they were still covered in grease. It was high time for a replacement on both sides.

You will need to drain the transmission fluid first which is best done when it is warm. Be sure to inspect the fluid for metal shavings. Get your new CV axles or remanufactured ones. Be sure to get a good warranty in case the axles are not straight. It's also a good idea to do a critical evaluation of your front suspension before the swap to see if it changes afterward. Look for pulling to one side under acceleration or vibrations.

Next up, loosen the 30mm nut on the front wheel before jacking the car up. You may need a good 1/2" breaker bar to do this and an extension pipe.

Place the nut on the end of the threads to protect them and tap the axle end with a hammer to dislodge the axle from the hub. A block of wood can also be used.

The manual says to simply unbolt the tie rod to allow the axle to be removed. You generally will not need a tie rod removal fork which may wreck the rubber boots. Instead, loosen the tie rod nut and leave it on to protect the threads, then smack the part of the steering knuckle holding the tie rod stud with a hammer, hard. The tie rod should pop right out. Sometimes you need two hammers, one from each side. Careful not to hit any threads.

We had the strut unbolted from the knuckle already so the tie rod was left in place and the CV slipped out as shown.

The drivers CV axle is pryed out with a crowbar right at the transmission. You can see why the transmission needs to be drained first. That yellow thing is a jack stand, ignore that.

The passenger side axle has a support bracket that is a little tougher. The support bracket is bolted to the engine and shown on the left side of the picture. The blue line is the seam between the CV axle and the bracket. The three bolts holding them together are first removed then use a hammer to hit where the red dots are to loosen the cv from the bracket.

This is the part that was inside the bracket. You can see the rust was holding it in there. Even after it was loose, I had to pull hard on the CV axle end to get it disengaged from the bracket and transmission, even using the bearings in the CV axle like a slide hammer to force it out.

Be sure to swap the nuts, washers and dust shield to the new axles before you return the old ones for the core charge.

The three bolts on the passenger side bracket can be tricky to get to. Extensions, wobblers and patience will help with most situations. This would be a realy great job for one of those twist handle ratchets in case you always wanted one.

 A little grease on the outer splines should help them from getting stuck next time, or not. You can coat the inner splines with transmission fluid to help them seat properly, don't forget to fill the transmission with new fluid as well. You may need a length of rubber hose to connect to the filler bottle in order to reach the transmission fill hole. 

 Thats it, slap it all back together again using torque values from the shop manual. You shouldn't need an alignment if you only undid the tie rod ends. Your test drive will allow you to compare the performance to how it rode before. My passenger side axle made a couple clunks at first but is quiet after driving a few times. Speaking of quiet, no more click, click, click, click...