Here's Why You NEVER MESS WITH Your Factory CV Axle Boot!!

Come on. There we go. Wow. That was easy. Came apart. Hopefully you can see that style of snap ring there. Well, this is always a good sign. Looks like we ordered the right part. Here's that outside housing, which I have thoroughly cleaned. This is extremely tight. Well, guys, we're working on axles today. Well, one axle. This one. If you look really close, right there, you can see we have a cut in the boot. Something at some point hit this axle and cut it open, and there is grease coming out. Okay, so here's the boot we're going to replace. The replacement boot kit I bought was by Dorman, and here is the product number, and I will put a link for this down in the description below. And I've already been messing around with this a little bit, so that's why you'll see it's a little bit dirty. So it comes with this light gray colored boot. I think it's made out of silicone. Seems to be pretty tough. It comes with two of this style of band clamp, and it comes with a package of grease, and this grease, I don't know if you can see it on here, it says made in England. With this type of boot clamp, you're going to need a specialized tool, and that tool looks like this. I will also put a link for this one down in the description below. This one is made by Lyle. It's made in the USA, and surprisingly, I found out that I believe this is the same unit that you might be able to buy through another professional box truck tool company, interestingly enough. So it's a simple tool, but the actual Lyle version here, like I said, is made in the USA, and it's very affordable. So link down in the description below. Okay, first things first, we need to get this old boot off of this thing, and we're going to start with the clamps. You can see this smaller crimp style clamp here, but on this end, this is a ring. There's nowhere to be able to, you know, undo a mechanism or something to get this ring off. So essentially, I have two options here. I can leave this on and put the new boot over this, which would probably be the easiest method, or I can take a grinder or something like that and try to cut this off at an extreme angle and see if I can get through it, or maybe even some tin snips or something like that. Okay, I had some tin snips lying around, so let's try this first and see if this is even an option. Yes, I don't think, yeah, I don't think this is going to be an option. Here's the end cap of this one that just popped off, and the end cap of this axle was just sitting there. I had already popped it off, and so it was extremely loose, just kind of sitting in place. I wanted to have a look inside to see what the grease looked like, and it actually doesn't look too bad. And here's a look inside the axle itself. I might have got it to catch. Oh, that hurt. Ow. Not using these things for what they were intended for. Not safe. Okay, so tin snips are basically not going to work on this. Now, I have another idea. What if I center punched this and drilled out a hole just in the strap here, being very careful not to hit the actual axle housing here? What if I was to use a drill bit like, for example, this big and get all the way through it? Let's try that. That certainly looks like it's working, although this is really dangerous because now we have metal shavings flying around everywhere. Now that I have a pretty decent hole there, I'm going to see if I can use the tin snips and see if I can't snip through that the rest of the way. Tell you what, this is some thick stuff. Okay, I think I got it on this side. All right, looks like just by working this thing a little bit. Come on. There we go. Wow, that was easy. All right, well, you can see what I was talking about. This was just a completely solid welded ring. There was no, you know, connection. It was just a solid ring that was welded together. Okay, let's see if we can break into this thing just by popping the lip up and over. And again, there's the original break in the boot. That does go all the way through. I had grease coming out. So now I'm going to work on removing this smaller clamp here, and I'm going to make my life a little harder because I'm going to try to save this so that it's reusable. So I'm not just going to destroy it and cut it off. At least not yet. I'm using a set of cutters here, and I'm going to try to get in here and just open this up a little bit. The problem is, is this is a factory clamp. So these are much more heavy duty than what you'd buy off the shelf at your local auto parts store right now, which is also why I want to try to save this thing, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to. Oh, it's moving. I can see some slack forming here. Try not to cut the metal, but I don't know if I have a choice. Okay, while I was doing that, the end of this thing just literally came apart. So it looks like the only thing holding this end cap on here is literally the boot. I just got this, just got it to pop off, and this smaller clamp here was the crimp style. You can see it's crimped here. You also need a specialized tool for this, and let me show you that. So you can see this tool here, which is also by Lyle, and this is another one of those tools that is made in the USA by Lyle, and it is also made, from what I understand, this exact tool is made for a very large, big box truck professional tool company. You can do a little research and figure that out pretty quickly, but if you buy it from Lyle, it is very affordable. And the end here is what makes this little clamp situation going on, where there's also the nice professional indentation in the top there. So this is the type of tool you'd need to install a clamp like this. Again, link down in the description below. Okay, so here is the boot with both of the clamps removed. Let's see how easy it is to take all of this apart. We've already seen this come off, so that's simply going to get cleaned out. And the next thing is, of course, to get this boot off. And you might think, well, why don't you just cut it off and make your life easy? Well, I want to be able to take this off and see how bad the damage is on this thing. So what I'm going to try to do is look for the snap ring under here, take this set of bearings off, and then maybe I can slide this factory boot off. All right, just wiping some of the grease out of there, best I can for now. You can get a look at these bearings here. And if you're wondering, yes, each one of these roller bearings are held in by another snap ring there, so these aren't going to come apart. I've pulled the boot down. I just want to get a bunch of this grease out of here. This is a very, very messy job. All right, maybe we can get a good peek now at this snap ring that's in here. Hopefully you can see that style of snap ring there. I'm going to try to use these snap ring pliers. Not exactly the right snap ring for this, but maybe it'll work. Okay, if I put them in from the top this way, spread it. Oh, that was almost it. I think this is going to work. There we go. With this first snap ring pulled down a little bit, I can then slide this bearing pack down, which then gives me access to the next little snap ring here on the end. Now, if I've counted my chickens correctly... There we go. So that came off very simply, but you do not want to lose this. This is what retains this bearing pack. I should now be able to... Yep, okay, so those are going to come right off. And I just want to point out here, you know, I thought for a second, how am I going to remember which side was the top? I just started looking at the body of this, and you can see on the inside here there is this weird kind of... I don't know if it's a weld or a seam or something like that, but there's two sections to this. There's this taller section, and there's four little dots here, and then there's this shorter section here. So this is how I'm going to remember that this taller section with these dots goes towards the outside. The shorter section here goes towards the inside. Easy enough. That slides right off. Now, because I want to remove this boot, and obviously slide on the new boot, I'm going to have to remove this snap ring here, and that was easy enough also. With everything removed, this boot should... Yep, it's going to come right off. And so the cleaning process begins. Just taking some clean shop towels, and I'm going to wipe this down. And now I want to test fit the new boot to make sure that this is going to work. And so far, yes, it looks like... All right. That does seem like the right size boot there. And looking closer at the shaft here, you can see we have some ridges here. This is so that the boot can seat. So all you'll do is really just push it down right about there, and that looks darn near perfect. Well, this is always a good sign. Looks like we ordered the right part, and we are in business. Here's that outside housing, which I have thoroughly cleaned the grease out of, and it is looking mighty fine. Taking a peek inside, I'm trying to look for anything that looks abnormal, and so far everything is looking pretty normal. You can see some slight polishing kind of on the edges here, but there's no sharp ridges or anything like that. However, the one thing I am noticing are these marks right in here, but what's interesting is those marks are in all three channels here. You can see the ones there, and we have some there. So all three channels have the same markings in pretty much the same spot. Now, if we look at the other end here, let me turn this thing over, we do see some more markings here, but again, those markings are in all three channels again, and you can see the last set there. So I'm really not sure what these markings would be from, if they're something that, you know, has happened just over the age and use of this CV axle, or if those are some kind of manufacturing marks. I don't know. I don't know if that's something that I should be concerned with or not. When I take a look at the bearings here, I don't really see there to be any way for this thing to make those marks. These things are completely smooth all the way around. There's nothing really that would indicate that it would be making those marks on the walls. Even feeling the edges here, I just don't feel anything that would give me any sort of concern. These feel nice and smooth, like they would have come from the machine shop or the factory. I wanted to show you what I'm doing to get the grease out of here. I'm using my compressed air and putting this bearing set in a shop towel, and I'm going to press with the air all the grease out of these needle bearings. You can see there is a lot of grease in there, and this is what they look like once I've pressed all that grease out. I'm just holding the bearing set in my shop towel, and that pushes all the grease out the top there, which then you can simply wipe down. So I'll go around and do this to the whole thing. So normally I would think I was done cleaning this stuff out. I feel like I did a pretty dang good job here, but if we look at this spare grease packet that I picked up, this is the same grease by Dorman, made in England, and we look at the installation instructions here at number three, it does say to clean the old grease completely out of CV joint with a non-residue cleaner, such as denatured alcohol or a commercial spray cleaner for brakes. You can see this is very clean. There is very little grease left in there, but certain types of greases can react with each other, so I'm assuming that's why they want me to use some brake clean and clean out the rest of the grease in here that I can't get to. So I'm going to do that now, and here is that final result after the brake clean. I went ahead and sprayed it out again with my air compressor just to make sure there was no brake clean left in there. So everything is definitely extremely clean on this. I'm not seeing anything wrong. I'm not seeing anything that looks alarming. This looks very, very good. When I install this bearing set into the housing and try to give it some twisting back and forth, this is extremely tight. There is no play here whatsoever. Also looking at the space there between the bearing and the walls, trying to see how I can recreate how those marks might have been made. I think those are from the manufacturing process. I don't think there's a way that this bearing could touch those walls at all, even if they were at an extreme angle. So to me, all this stuff looks as good as new. At this point, all three major components are totally clean of all the previous factory grease. I sprayed brake clean on these splines here just to get the remaining grease off of these, and then followed that up with shop air. I did the same thing here. I sprayed this out with shop air to get the grease out, then I followed it up with brake clean and followed that up with shop air again. This housing I simply wiped extremely clean with some shop towels, and the only thing left to do is to put it all back together with this new boot. The install is simply the reverse of the way we took it apart, but we want to make sure of a certain couple of steps. Number one, depending on the type of boot clamp you're using, you want to slide your boot clamp on first before you do anything else. This type doesn't necessarily matter so much because I can take this thing fully apart and install it even after I've installed everything, but just for the sake of it, we're going to slide it on first, and next goes our actual boot. So this boot, I'm going to slide my hand inside here and help it to slide all the way down, and you can see I just want it on these grooves as far as it'll go, which is just about there, and you can feel when it sets in place. We have no more grooves visible, and it definitely feels like it is in the right spot. So now if you had this type of clamp, this would probably already be partially put together, so you'd have to have this already slid on before you slide your boot on. Now the next thing I want to do is slide this snap ring on, and I'm going to slide it all the way down to about here. I doubt it really matters, but if you look at this snap ring, one side of it is worn more than the other side, and I did take note that the unworn side goes down and the worn side, the side that the bearing set rides on, goes towards the bearing side. Okay, you can see the snap ring is now installed. It's slid down way past where it needs to be, and the purpose of that is so that when I slide this on, I can slide it down far enough to get the second smaller snap ring in the top. Then I'll slide this bearing set back up, and then slide this lower snap ring back up. But what I actually need to do now is use the included grease and grease up this bearing set as well as this axle. So this part of the job, depending on what type of a person you are, could be fun or could be not so fun. I'm just using the packet to squeeze grease everywhere it's going to need to go, twisting this bearing around so that that grease circulates in those needle bearings. Knowing the nature of grease, you know, getting everywhere, sticking to everything, this is also why I decided to buy a second backup packet of this exact same grease. I went to my local automotive store and was able to find this exact grease on the shelf. Go ahead and slide this bearing set on, and with that bearing set on, I can now set this top snap ring. All right, that's in place and rotating freely. I can pull the bearing set back up. It might be home already. Yeah, I think we're home. I'm in here verifying that this lower snap ring is set, and one way you can do that is visually, of course, but also just by spinning the snap ring, which if it spins freely, which it's doing, you know that it's set in its track there. If it wasn't, it would be very hard or near impossible to spin like this, so I went around and pushed it up all the way, and now it is spinning nice and freely in its track, so we're good to go. I still have a little grease in this packet, which I am going to finish putting in this boot, but I just wanted to show you that I did completely cover that bearing set in grease. I then slid the housing on, so we do have a lot of grease on the bearing set, but you can see the walls of this housing don't really have any grease, and looking deep inside this boot, you can see there's really no grease in here either, so that's why I ended up buying a second packet of grease. I'm going to shoot some grease in this boot as well as in this housing here. Very, very messy job. Make sure you have lots and lots of gloves on hand, literally and figuratively. We have lots of grease in there. Here is that second grease packet, which is the exact same grease. Even the markings on the outside of this packet were the same. They both said made in England. It is the same grease. I'm going to go ahead and shoot it inside this boot. As well as continue filling the inside of that. Okay, here's that end cap. I'm going to go ahead and tap this thing in. I've already cleaned it up, and there's that end cap, and it is completely sealed at this point. I have the boot slid all the way up to the factory location, the indentations that were here in this housing. I am making sure that it is all the way up, all the way around, in the exact same position. And I'm making sure that this band clamp is all the way on. And with this tool, you can see there's a slit in the end of this tool, and there's also a slot here. So with all the slack removed out of this band clamp, I'm going to slide the tool into the slit on the end and into that slot. With everything together, I'm going to take this 5-8ths ratchet and start to apply pressure here. As I turn this ratchet, we are tightening this clamp. And with that nice and tight, I'm then going to fold it over. You can see it's folded over. Remove my ratchet and slide this tool off. Now, this little section here, I just need to bend down. I'll go ahead and use this hammer. Then we have these two tabs that I'm just going to fold over. And here is that outside clamp. Everything is done nice and neat. Of course, I need to wipe this thing down. We have the outside cap on. We have the boot totally and completely clamped into place. It's very tight. Now, the only thing left to finish this job is to tighten this clamp on this side. I'll go ahead and take all of the slack out of this clamp. Okay, our boot is in exactly the right spot. It's right in the groove. Our clamp has all the slack taken out of it. I'm going to go ahead and remove some of the metal back here. That way, I don't have so much to mess with as I tighten this thing. The tricky part is making sure everything is lined up and where it needs to be. Making sure we're where we need to be. Now, we're tight. I'm going to fold it over. That little ear is kind of getting in the way there. Okay, there we go. I'm going to take my ratchet off. I'm going to slide everything out. I'm going to take my hammer and finalize that bend. I'm going to knock these ears over with the tin snips. Snip some of that off, and I'll take this and fold it back over. Sheesh, that one went pretty dang good. Almost like I've done it before, huh? Nice and tight. Well, here we are with the finished CV axle. This thing was completely torn apart, cleaned out, re-greased, and rebooted. As far as the quality of the kit from Dorman, it does seem like a pretty good kit. I'm happy with the clamps that it came with. I'm happy with the grease that it came with, although I wish it did come with double what it came with, so I had to buy a separate grease packet at the local auto parts store. Other than that, the grease seemed like a really thick, good quality grease made in England. This boot also seems like a nice boot. It seems to be made of silicone or something like that. I do wish the clamps were a little thicker and more beefy, maybe, but they do seem like they're doing the job. Overall, it's definitely not a difficult job. It did take me some time because, obviously, I'm filming the whole process, but also this was my first time ever doing this. I imagine if I had to do it again, I could probably do it in about a quarter of the time it took me just now. Now, when compared to the factory boot, this boot right here seems like it is built like a tank. This is a heavy-duty boot. It is made of a much harder material. I can't even squeeze it together, but as you saw, the whole reason why we changed this out was because it did have a nick in it, a tear. So, grease was leaking out, and therefore, grease can come out and water can get in, and you don't want that. So, could I have just patched this CV boot instead of getting a brand new one? Maybe. I definitely think this factory boot is a much higher quality, but that being said, they're not available anymore. This is what's available. It seems like it's pretty good, but only time will tell how well this thing lasts. All right. Well, hopefully, you enjoyed this video. Hopefully, you got something out of it. Please remember, I'm not a professional. I'm simply a guy in my garage who likes to work on my truck and film it. So, don't take my advice. Consider this video entertainment only. Do your own research. Come to your own conclusions, and if you've watched this far, please hit that thumbs up. It really does help the video and the channel, and also, if you've watched this far and you're not a subscriber, consider subscribing. I'm Jimmy for OneRoad, and I will see you in the next one.