On Tuesday, July 21, 2020 at 9:51:41 AM UTC-4, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Tue, 21 Jul 2020 06:18:38 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:



https://www.google.com/search?client...ck+pinion+boot
Here's more on the topic. If you're lucky, there's some discussion too.
'
They make boots for CV joings that go on without removing anything,
also. I did that once, myself. I didn't do a great job but they are
fillled with grease.

I've never attempted to use one, for that reason. I wouldn't trust a split
boot that glues together and doubt it will last very long. Especially for
a rack boot, where doing it the right way is much less involved than doing
a CV boot.

It lasted long enough but it was messy, and I was worried that too much
grease got out and not enough remained. But I don't think that
happened. Now I might just replace a half-axle, which I did once
after a collision with a curb.

There are two theories on that. One is catch it early and replace just the
boot. The other is that by the time you figure out the boot is torn,
dirt has likely gotten in and started to compromise it, so just drive it
until it makes noise and then replace the axle. The work involved is
typically less to replace the axle instead of putting a boot on.
The mistake some people make is they think axles are axles, they look at
some crap rebuild one or Chinese junk. If you have an OEM axle and it's
fine other than the boot, I would replace the boot if possible over the
cheap alternatives.