Yours was 17mm allen? my car and my buddies 98.5 A4 were both 14mm allen....

 

hmm well empi brand it isnt then haha... and i think it would be easier to just do the axle... but ima go check prices right now..

 

Yeah my 99 and my friend's 96 (both quattro) are 17 front and 14 rear. Pricing, the Empi axle was $100 from German Auto Parts (who were nothing short of awesome to deal with through the whole fiasco) and the rebuild kit was $167 from Blauparts, but I think FCP Groton has rebuild kits too and based on my experience with their control arm kit, I'd buy the CV from them too.

 

well i just went to autozone, kragen, pepboys and carquest... they all told me either cv half shaft or cv complete assembly... when i asked them about the axle they said no lol... so is that wht i need?

also i asked about rear wheel bearing its the outter right? they all want less than 10 bucks, ecs tuning wants like 30 for the rear... is this normal? or should i just buy from ecs to make sure its the right bearing

 

Parts like that I'd buy from a known German parts supplier like ECS, PureMS, or German.

 

it's technically a cv halfshaft. When you said axle they were thinking this:

 

ok thats what i thought... just making sure... well ill get that soon... what is more of a dangerous thing to have a bad cv joint or bad wheel bearing?

 

Based on what happens when they fail catastrophically a wheel bearing failure is worse (wheel flies off the car and you go hurtling into the nearest ditch, field, guardrail, or other piece of civil engineering) than a CV failure (joint shears, axle breaks, maybe damages parts inside wheel, and you coast to the side of the road).

 

It would make sense to do them at the same time....

 

Phil how do they ride