My right-front CV joint is making a clicking noise whenever I turn (gets worse with speed). Looking on ECS Tuning shows that an entire front axle is roughly the same price as just the boot repair kit. I've heard that the aftermarket axles don't fit right sometimes, is this true?

 

Yea most after market axles are made in china and.... well they make their stuff cheap.. its like the ebay turbos! would you put that on your car.. didnt think so and well those are made in china.
try the dealership, they recently dropped the prices of full axles for all vw and audi's i had my front driver side outrer cv boot split and the joint was bad. I believe for my quattro an axle and new hardware was like $222.37...ish
but thats with core exchange bring them your old axle back and they give you like $150 off thats how it becomes so cheap.

 

Don't buy an aftermarket axle as they often do not fit right due to small differences in axles between years/configs. You might not even notice, but it could be catastrophic.

Replace the entire CV joint and boot. If you hear clicking then it's already too worn out.

 

Do just the CV and boot, under a hundred bucks on esc or blauparts, and you only have to do half the work (outter CV only, instead of dealing with the outter and inner).

 

No, it's still at least 80% of the work because most of the work is on the outer side, anyway. The only big advantages are that you know you have the right axle and that you don't need to buy the triple square set. You only save a little time. Actually, it might have taken me less time to replace the axles and it would have been far less messy.

 

Depends if the replacement axle comes with grease on the inner cv joint or not... if it didn't then it's gonna be pretty messy regardless. It will be especially messy if the inner CV joint is tilted relative to the axle, after grease is put in. This was my mistake LOL.

Which means, yes, I purchased an ENTIRE axle from http://www.autohausaz.com more specifically the EMPI brand of 8D0407272AQ. So far so good, except after about 700 miles ALL of the triple-square drive bolts (hold the inner cv joint to transmission flange) were loose. Tightened them back up and hopefully they'll hold...

 

I'm probably just going to get an entire axle. Not much more work, plus if it's true that the price for an OEM one is down that's even better cause I can get parts at cost (perks of working at a body shop).

 

Is it possible to swap axles L <--> R? I've done this before after rebuilding CV joints, as it (supposedly) tends to even out the wear. I did this specifically after rebuilding a "clicky" one. It's been quiet for 30K now, but I don't know that it wouldn't have been just as quiet if I hadn't swapped it.

 

Axles, I don't think so, but joints, you could...

 

http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/de...1424&ppt=C0362

This should work for my right-front axle shouldn't it?