Broke the passenger inner tie rod friday afternoon, thought might as well do the CV joints since boots were torn as well with a very nice clicking sound from the drivers side.

 

Of course I need the car Mon for a long road trip, from PA to FL and back in 4 days, so I settled for Advance CV joints. Alighment being done 8am Monday then off to FL. Kept the originals and will rebuild them so that when the Chinesse ones fail I will have OEM to replace them with. Other than cleaning them up and new boots is there anything else I should do, should I rebuild the CV joints as well. If so anyone know where I can get a quaility rebuild kit or is it Subaru Stock only ? Considering 168,000 miles in the NE, OEM is probably worth the price.

 

Got a good deal as the clerk only charged me for 1 axel. Amazingly he is not a pimple faced pr**k who knows nothing about cars, but from what I understand he makes a lot of errors like that and is on the short list for firing.

 

Installation was easy as my daughters boyfriend came over to help. He is in a diesl repair program and has some nice ideas on doing the job that made it easier than anything else I found on line.

 

Disconnect the strut housing from the brake assembly. Entire brake assembly, rotor, caliper.. all pivot out of the way, jsut be carfull of break line and ABS sline, slide out axel.

 

Other than a little hum, sounds like tire road noise, they do not seem to bad, just have to see how long they last. Hopefully they make it to FL and back with out an issue.

Good job. How long did it take?

Broke the passenger inner tie rod friday afternoon, thought might as well do the CV joints since boots were torn as well with a very nice clicking sound from the drivers side.

 

Of course I need the car Mon for a long road trip, from PA to FL and back in 4 days, so I settled for Advance CV joints. Alighment being done 8am Monday then off to FL. Kept the originals and will rebuild them so that when the Chinesse ones fail I will have OEM to replace them with. Other than cleaning them up and new boots is there anything else I should do, should I rebuild the CV joints as well. If so anyone know where I can get a quaility rebuild kit or is it Subaru Stock only ? Considering 168,000 miles in the NE, OEM is probably worth the price.

 

Axle "rebuilding" entails replacing everything but the shaft itself. Mostly not worth the cost of the parts. Dissasemble, regrease, reboot. If they are too badly worn to consider this then toss them.

 

Disconnect the strut housing from the brake assembly. Entire brake assembly, rotor, caliper.. all pivot out of the way, jsut be carfull of break line and ABS sline, slide out axel.

 

Hope you marked the position of the upper bolt - it's a special cam bolt that adjusts the camber. If you didn't then you may need an alignment.

 

Generally speaking the easiest method is to remove the pinch bolt from the ball joint and use a large pry-bar to push down on the control arm and pull the ball joint free of the knuckle. Unless that interface is too rusty and then you mark and remove the strut clamp bolts as you have done. That is not the best way unless it's neccesary due to corrosion.

 

EJ axle swaps generally take me about 20 minutes per side. It's just the wheel, ball joint, roll pin, and then the 32mm axle nut. Very, very, very simple.

 

GD

Alignment done now off to FL. - My mechanic said I eye balled it pretty close.

 

Entire job did not take that long. Only problem was getting things apart. Everything was original so we are talking 15 yrs of NE salt, rain, salt, snow, salt, slush. Did I mention salt ? I have an impact gun with 260 ft/lbs max torgue and even that did not work sometimes. Had to use a 4ft breaker bar to free some of the bolts. Maybe tiem to go get a better impact gun.

 

Never thought of the Ball Joint trick to replace them, I will do that when I replace them again if needed. The originals are in pretty bad shape so I guess I will just toss them

Did you have to remove the calipers and the rotors?

Any problem getting the dust shield bolts out without breaking?

 

The hum that sounds like road noise my be a wheel bearing.

did not have to remove the rotor, caliper or dust sheild. just removed the 2 bolts connected the strut mount, the castle nut on tie rod end popped the tie rod out, rotated everything out of the way, slid the old axel out and put new one in. Only time consuming aspect was getting the bolts to break free. All original parts and in SE PA road salt is a problem so they were on there tight.

 

Hum was not present before I replaced everything so i suspect just cheap Chinese axel but will have to look into the wheel bearings.