On 10:40 PM 11/01/02 -0500, George Freeman said...
(* snip *)Rob,I ran into the same situation a couple of years ago only I didn't catch the rupture in time. Seems only a little dirt & sand is all it takes to destroy the internals of the CV joint and repacking with grease made no difference. I got the quick & dirty CV boot repair kit- has a split down the side and you screw the thing together. Turns out the kit actually worked but even after a thorough cleaning with degreaser & re-packing with fresh grease, the clicking/thunking persisted so I ended up replacing the axle at the shop. The amount of grease I used was as much as I could pack inside the boot. I don't believe there's any way to put too much in, so pack away! George '89 DX-Hybrid-D16Z6, 125k miles "Seats, Suspension, Engine, MSD, next=dyno"
I've used split boots like that before but they were inner boots on my '61 VW Bug (which doesn't have an outer CV boot).
Only once did I use one for an outer CV and that was on the Audi 4000 we use to have... we were on our way back to San Diego from San Francisco. When we pulled into a gas station in the L.A. area for fuel, I did a quick check of oil, coolant and the tires and noticed that we had a torn boot ~ pretty bad in that the boot was basically not there.
I found a Pep Boy's, purchased a split boot, a pair of jack stands for the low cost of $9.95 (which I still have and use today) as they were on sale and installed the new split boot in a nearby park parking lot. It was kinda neat in that not only did you use 20 nuts and bolts to hold the thing together, it came with a small tube of rubber glue to help seal the boot together.
Of course said glue had a life of about 200 miles since that was about the number of miles we had before we were home. The following day the seams did not seal and grease had leaked out (not all, but most of it).
I paid about $10 for the boot and it did it's job so I can't complain. :^)
Thanks for the reply...
Robert K. Kuhn
CRX Owners Group President (http://www.crx.org/southcal)
1990 Honda CRXsi (http://www.hooligan.cc)
ICQ # 3714283 (nickname: godzilla)
