[The Radium King]

doing the boots yourself is not so much a hard job as it is a finicky job that requires a few non-stanard tools. you need to get a huge amount of torque to the wheel nut (whcih means big torque wrench and breaker bar). you have to make sure you don't get any grease on the fasteners that attach the cv to the transmission flange when reassembling. sometimes the cv is really difficult to get off the shaft and you need a slidehammer or somesuch (and the outer cv has to come off to fit the inner boot. *** edit - the other way around - inner cv comes off to change the outer boot ***). depending on the boot clamp you need a special tool to put them on. and it is a dirty job.

having said that i had no luck with aftermarket halfshafts - mostly garbage in my experience. given i didn't trust my cv's as the boots had been torn for sometime and i wasn't sure how much crud the bearings had been exposed to, i just bought used oem shafts off ebay.