Went to get an alignment and discovered I need inner tie rod ends and steering rack bushings, the play was obvious in both when they showed me on the rack.
I will swap in the Wheelers steering rack bushings and replace the inner and outer air rod ends myself. But they also said I need two new CV joints.

When I bought the vehicle a few months ago the CV's looked fine. I went to an off road clinic and did a couple laps of the course, was stopped with one and then the other front tire suspended in the air as part of the course practice.

So now there is grease seeping out the outer CXV boots. There are no tears. There is no clicking or noises. Seems to me I can use a needler attachment and regrease the lints, clean up the boots and throw on a zip tie to reduce weeping of the grease.

Is this unrealistic? This is my daily driver.

Also is there a big difference in quality of the Toyota remanufactured CV axles vs a local source with core swap after installation? I have used only Toyota parts up until now but am not sure what parts difference would be between a remanufactured OEM sourced locally vs from Toyota, the lathers about 3x more.

Thanks for your input!

How many miles on your CV joints? The OEM cv joints are decent. Remfg CV joints are good too. My Tetanus 1 I put new napa ones in. They work alright.

I am sure there are more rigid CV joints out there and many users on here that are great.

If I were to do it again, I would just buy remanufactured Toyota axles. They are good quality and last a long time

Warn cv joints have play in them. Failing cv joints click and bang.

No torn boots and clicking going on is good.



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Even a torn boot with no grease in it is not going to cause the joint to fail immediately. It will last quite awhile.

Drive it! I don't recommend running them with no grease, but you can, and I did for several months before fixing mine. If you can add more grease, and keep it in the boot you'll be fine.

Napa cv's are re-manufactured, and it's a crap shoot on what you'll get. I've gotten both aftermarket, and OEM cv's from Napa labeled as their "Gold" series.

Mike

Are you absolutely sure there's play in the inner tie rods? Before dropping big coin on them, I'd pull the boots off and do a good inspection of them. OEM inner tie rods are buckoo bucks, around $300. For that amount, it's almost better to get a whole new OEM steering rack for around $500 because a new steering rack comes with new inner tie rods. You're steering play could be due to the steering rack guide which is way more affordable to replace.

As for your CV axles, if all they did is squeeze out some grease from the boot ends and there's no tears, drive happily on and don't worry about it. Those joints have a crapload of grease in them and if you just lost a little bit, I wouldn't worry about it.

Mine were new not remfg ones. As not only were more money then the remains. They stated new on the boxes. I would just do remain Toyotas on any of my other rigs. Better quality. I probably have 20 or 30k on my napa joints so far.

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OK. Once you pull the Napa cv's apart you'll understand.

I have an OEM CV completely torn, barely any grease in there, in Canadian winters, daily driven for probably close to 30,000miles.
Still not clicking after 2.5 years.
Currently at 205k miles.
Not recommended, but just stating facts.

i bought new napa ones for 83 with no core charge earlier this week. the remfg'd ones are 57 + a 110 core charge. since there is no core charge, wouldnt that indicate that it is in fact new? hopefully this link works:
https://www.napaonline.com/en/search...onEnabled=true

the site says they are 'napa max drive', but the box's logo says 'trakmotive'. i opened the box to take a quick glance at them, but i didnt check for the notches. according to this thread it looks like they are atleast based off the OEM ones or in spec:
Aftermarket CV Axle vs. OEM | Toyota Nation Forum
scroll down to see the napa stuff, i was told to look for notches on the CV shafts to see if they're any good. i will have to check tonight and see what i got.

im assuming what i bought is different than yours. just about every review on the new napa axles i read last week was positive and what convinced me to go with them. i had to buy 600 bucks worth of other crap for my front end refresh so i couldnt drop 500+ bones before getting my cores charge back from that other company that i cant remember right now that re-mfgs toyota axles (despite them having better boots and more optimized for my lift). i still havent 'bought' the rental tools either. i got out of an expensive lexus to 'save' money on a 'cheap' toyota. i put 6k into an IS over the course of 3 years, im at half that now in less than 6 months with my 4runner. i guess i was wrong! LOL

i also bought the new ones because of the life time warranty and i indend to keep my one good cv axle that is currently on the truck without a torn boot as a spare, so it really was a no brainer for me. at $30/side over the re-mfg'd ones, it became clear the new ones would work out better for me.

wow, that is good to know. here i am worried that something will happen to my cv axle with a torn boot if i dont fix this immediately. the one thing that drives me nuts is knowing im going to have to clean all this god damn grease off my suspension stuff.

I never said anything bad about the Napa CV's, and never will. I've been running them for years, and won't buy OEM reman cv's. Napa's have a lifetime warranty on them, and I can just exchange them when a boot rips if I'm feeling lazy.

Unless something has changed with Napa, all of their cv's are reman's. It even states that on their website. Maybe they have some other cv's in store that aren't list on their site, who knows. Also, I've changed boots on mine, and had two different bearing styles between them.

Mike

Interesting. But good to know. Thanks Mike. ;)

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the language and tone in post 4 and 7 suggest you werent completely satisfied with them. glad to hear you are.

i specifically asked the guy if they were new and he said 'well they dont require cores so theyre new'; although im really not too hung up on that. i would just like them to match each other (OCD), work when i put them in, and not tear a boot right away.

the funny thing is there is a sticker in the boxes that say a ripped boot does not constitute a valid warranty claim. you are the second person to say this is not the case; which is good because if i can get a new axle and not have to do a boot rebuild that is what i am going to do. i go up to the mountains in the dirt just about every weekend and in the dry months its incredibly dusty up there. im sure my passenger CV with the torn boot is junk and if it isnt, i have no intention of cleaning it all out for a boot rebuild. i also plan to do snow wheeling in the same area in the coming weeks and im sure excessive moisture isnt great for the innards of the CV.

thanks again! hopefully shoot you a PM over the next couple of weeks once i get this project out of the way to order some endlinks.

Was gone a couple days, Thanks for all the replies!

I did not know that steering racks come with new inner tie rod ends, might have gone that way but I have Toyota Inners on the way and a bushing kit from Wheeler's for the steering rack.

Talking to others while gone I am not going to tough the CV joins, I think they are just fine.One said the high pass I went over the trapped air in the cover might have expanded and burped out a little grease. Who knows...