Thanks for the info on Raxles. I heard about them from someone here on this website , spoke with them & they seem to have a quality product & care about what they are doing. But some time went by & i forgot about them.
Will save there site to my favorites.
http://www.raxles.com/

 

I emailed raxles asking for a price quote. After I decided to go with empi, they offered to buy my axles for $30 each. What if my axle shafts are actually bent, they would reuse them and then someone would buy their axles and have bent shaft which would lead to broken cv boots and joints all the time.... So that was one little part of my decision to not get raxles axles...

 

Checking for bent shafts is one of the checks that are done before it gets sent back out.
Do you really think someone who does nothing but repair axles for a living would send out a bent axle as a rebuilt?
I spoke with them over there & they know what they are doing. I just wish they did the Mercedes Benz front axles. Dealer gets $1200 each for them.

 

Well...

I guess I'm going to take the axle off and try a hydraulic press to remove the cv joint.

 

its just held on by a spring clip, it should pop off with a couple hits from a hammer...

 

When I was trying to remove the cv joint, I torqued the axle bolt with a 3' breaker bar which exerted so much force that the cv joint housing shattered.

With that in mind, do you still think a hammer is going to get it off?

 

first of all, to get the cv joint off, you dont need that much force if you use the bolt to get it off. It should pop off fairly easily. The MOST probable reason why it broke off, was because you didn't put the bolt in straight so it would be up against the axle shaft CENTER and the cv joint was not near perfectly straight with the axle when you tightened the bolt, causing the outside of the cv joint to seperate. The inside part is only held onto the axle shaft by a spring clip. Hammer it out, in, out, in, out, etc a couple of times and it should push the clip down enough so the rest of the cv joint can jump over that clip.

 

using a 3' breaker bar, you should have known something was off and shouldn't have used the breaker bar in the first place.

 

hope i didn't screw anything up.

thanks.

 

I tried to hammer the joint off but it wasn't moving no matter how hard I hit it.
It would move just a little up on the shaft so I took a pair of side cutters and gnawed through the plastic bushing until I could pry it off with a screwdriver.
Then, I was able to slide the joint up enough to get the circlip off. The clip wasn't as mangled as I expected it to be. It was much wider, or stretched out than it should have been.
Pulling and tapping on the rear of the joint, it came off easily.

Some of the splines will need to be deburred with a file, but they are in much better shape than I expected.

The new joint should arrive tomorrow and I'll be back in business.