CV Joint Maintenance

[Bailes1992]

This might be a strange one, but this is BITOG, so it's allowed.

Now I've been driving for a little over 13 years and have accumulated an estimated 250k miles driving many different vehicles. Only once have I experienced CV joint failure and it was the inner joint of my first car, a '98 Peugeot 406. So clearly they're pretty robust. However, this is the land website of excessive maintenance and mileage, so I feel this is quite a fitting topic. Something I would consider doing despite knowing it would unlikely add any useful life to the part.

So does anyone here routinely pop open the CV joints and replace the grease?

 

[hrv]

This might be a strange one, but this is BITOG, so it's allowed.

Now I've been driving for a little over 13 years and have accumulated an estimated 250k miles driving many different vehicles. Only once have I experienced CV joint failure and it was the inner joint of my first car, a '98 Peugeot 406. So clearly they're pretty robust. However, this is the land website of excessive maintenance and mileage, so I feel this is quite a fitting topic. Something I would consider doing despite knowing it would unlikely add any useful life to the part.

So does anyone here routinely pop open the CV joints and replace the grease?

NO

 

[Dave9]

CV maintenance is primarily to inspect the boot for tears/cracks and replace if torn. If the tear causes grime ingress or substantial grease loss, clean and repack with moly grease.

 

[Astro14]

No.

Regular inspection. Boot (and grease) replacement when they start to crack.

 

[RAR]

Nope.

If the joint is acting up via clicking, torn up boot, etc., it gets changed out.

In the 80s I’d see cv boot kits, read instructions on how to take apart and repack joints, and even the old split boot fix. I didn’t have a front wheel drive back then so I never did that myself.

Front wheel drive cars I do front end work on I tend to see if a replacement cv axle is cheap enough on a really high mileage one just to swap it out for peace of mind. Why? I’ve seen them with thinned out shafts due to rust. And yes, I’ve had one break at the joint on my 1988 Audi 80 front wheel drive model. Back then, I didn’t have the know how to fix that so it cost me a sum on my college student budget.

 

[dfarr67]

Depending on boot material- I hit it with silicone spray twice a year.

 

[atikovi]

It's sealed and receives no contaminants like oil in the engine. Unless the grease leaks out or the car is beat on, it should last the life of the car assuming it's well made in the first place.

 

[Bailes1992]

It's sealed and receives no contaminants like oil in the engine. Unless the grease leaks out or the car is beat on, it should last the life of the car assuming it's well made in the first place.

What about wear contamination? Metals etc from the joint as it goes about life.

 

[atikovi]

What about wear contamination? Metals etc from the joint as it goes about life.

If it's high quality steel, there should be minimal wear. Now if it's made in China where they may throw all kinds of ingredients into the pot and never test the metallurgy, that's a different story.

 

[IndyIan]

What about wear contamination? Metals etc from the joint as it goes about life.

I guess in theory there shouldn't be too much, until near the end when the wear curve goes way up?
Probably there is some merit in repacking "rebuilt" CV joints of questionable quality with good grease? I find in a lot of lower end products that require grease, they put a minimal amount of minimal quality grease to save the $0.11 per unit...
Cheaper mountain bike forks suddenly work much better with the proper grease in them!

 

[repairman54]

I've taken OEM CV joints to over 200k miles on several vehicles. My old '80's Civic didn't make 50k miles. Why? Poorly designed, made or undersized joints. That Civic has been the only vehicle with CV joints I had to replace axles in. And boots were intact, both axles went bad. Old 2 speed you shift 1 to 2 automatic trans.

 

[JavierH19]

There's no maintenance that you can do other than to replace the cracked boot so it doesn't rip open and let grease sling out. That causes the bearing inside to wear out. You can replace just the boot and scrape the old grease and repack with fresh grease if it hasn't failed already. If the boot has long failed then replacing just the boot would be silly. The bearing is already toast.