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I've just moved into a new-to-me house a couple of days ago. I noticed multiple times, spots of grease on the garage floor and I kept wiping them up. My first assumption was that some nimrod over-lubricated the garage door opener drive chain and it did look pretty wet.
But thinking about it more, it was only on the floor and never on the car. Hmm.
At the same time, I am getting a new roof installed and the roofers have been slinging nails all over the freaking place, so before I pulled my car out of the garage today, I walked the driveway picking up nails so they don't end up in my tires and coincidentally I got down on the ground to look under the front of the car.
I'm glad I did. Both of my front tires (with only about 3K miles on them) are down to the cords on the inner edge. Fark, another set of PS4's, grrrr. Looks like I need to do the K-Mac camber kit on the front now too. I have the kit on the back and the backs are perfect.
But this lead me to the bigger issue. I found the grease, lol Nicely spread all inside the left front wheel (4MATIC), and after pulling the wheel, slung over the suspension and wheel well. Looks like the CV joint boot bought the farm.
Has anyone here replaced the boot yourself? Any tips?
Man that sucks. If you are comfortable doing work on your car, it's not a hard thing to do but it will take some time as you will need to dissemble the wheel hub.
Front axles do not like to be lowered with the amount of TQ they are trying to put down.
You may also want to replace the control arms while you are in there as one of the rubber joints looks cracked and worn.
This might correct the alignment enough to fix the tire wear or you may need the kmec setup if you are lowered too much (also with the wheel spacer you have change the geometry).
Front axles do not like to be lowered with the amount of TQ they are trying to put down.
You may also want to replace the control arms while you are in there as one of the rubber joints looks cracked and worn.
This might correct the alignment enough to fix the tire wear or you may need the kmec setup if you are lowered too much (also with the wheel spacer you have change the geometry).
Agreed, if I had to assume a cause of failure, I'd guess it's because I'm riding so low and the suspension and axle angles are out of component design specs. Plus, I like to corner hard and accelerate hard out of corners. I'm sure that doesn't help, lol.
I already have 2 new PS4's for the front and I'll be ordering the K-Mac camber kit for the front. In the meantime, I've raised the front about a 1/2 inch. Plus I have been getting tired of the scraping as I've had it as low as I could go.
I do most of my own work on this car, but this is now my only car, so I think I'll bring it to a local shop to get the boot replaced. If I get hung-up on something I don't want to trap myself in my garage and have to Uber my *** all over town.
My car has been lowered going on 4 years now. I have had no problem except that I now need to replace my flex piping for my exhaust and now need to find a good shop that will not hack up my already expensive Armytrix exhaust.
Last edited by Cosworth2000; Feb 10, 2023 at 10:41 AM.
My car has been lowered for going on 4 years now. I have had no problem except that I now need to flex piping for my exhaust and now need to find a good show that will not hack up my already expensive Armytrix exhaust.
Yeah, the cause of failure are all assumptions without a scientific analysis, who knows for sure. I do know I had the front as low as I could go and still able to have the wheels to spin freely, lol.
Before I just raised it, I was 24-3/4" from the ground to the center of the fender lip arch. And that's with a fairly tall sidewall tire (245/35/19).
Mine's going to an indy shop tomorrow. The shop said that from their experience, in the long run it's more cost efficient to just replace the entire axle assembly (comes with boots installed), so that's what they're gonna do tomorrow.
She was up on the lift this morning, looking like an off-roader, lol.
They had to order the axle assembly, scheduled to arrive Tuesday. I'm driving it in the meantime without issue. At least the grease stopped flinging everywhere, lol. Of course that means the CV joint only has whatever lubricant is still stuck in there. I doubt I'll cook it by Tuesday.
Looks like right now with the new axle assembly and labor, I'm at $500. I'm happy with that!
Just an update for anyone curious, I brought the car back to the shop today to get the newly arrived axle installed and the supplier sent a right-hand axle assembly. Dur.
After another week and a half of waiting for the LF axle to come in, I hadn't heard from the shop so I called to see what's up. They were like "oh sorry, let me check and I'll call you right back". That was two weeks ago, lol. I don't really need the car much so I haven't been stressing over it, but I'm moving on...
I ordered an axle on Amazon. I know, right? It just sounds funny, but hey, you can get axles on Amazon! It'll be here Monday - this one:
My alignment dude said he can install the axle for me, no problem. The only downside is there's a long waiting period to get an appointment at his shop (great shop and popular), so the soonest appt I could get is in three weeks. He'll do the axle, the front K-Mac camber kit (that just arrived today) and a 4-wheel alignment.
The front tires are so bad (inner edges down to the cords), I think I'm pushing my luck driving on them, so I got my new tires put on the wheels today. I really didn't want to run them until I got my camber under control, but I'm just going to limit my driving for a bit.
So, last week I'm sitting outside and see a truck driving in my neighborhood that has "mobile tires and brakes" on it. I'm like "crap! why haven't I ever tried that before?". This is perfect for me, because I prefer to be the only one that ever pulls my wheels off, and only with hand tools. Plus I don't have to go anywhere or try to cram tires in my backseat or trunk.
I call the mobile tire guy thinking this is probably gonna be expensive, but not at all. He came to my driveway today, mounted and balanced both front tires and took the old ones with him. $75. Awesome.
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Nicely spread all inside the left front wheel (4MATIC), and after pulling the wheel, slung over the suspension and wheel well. Looks like the CV joint boot bought the farm.
