Drive shaft question.
 

I'm going to be puling the drive shafts off my car and I'm wondering how I can tell if they are okay to put on new boots and repack with new grease or if they are worn out and just need to be tossed away? They currently have almost 128,000 miles on them.

Thanks!

I'm curious (mine has <~125K). Are you doing this preventatively? Is there any indication of failure? Thanks!

The outer boot on one side is cracked and the other side looks like it could go at any time.

On mine I removed the old boots, cleaned out the old grease and replaced with Redline High Temp CV-2 grease, at around 125,000'ish total miles. The boots were old but not cracked, but I did it because I was overheating the grease on track and it was coming out the axle vent hole. The Redline grease solved it.

I wondered the same thing, how to tell if the joint was still good, and the way I tested it was to hold the axle in one had, and the joint in the other had, and twist the joint to move the axle. If the axle moves right away, and there is no clicking/play from when you rotate the joint and when you feel the force in the axle, then I believe you are all good. I tried this throughout a couple of positions of CV joint extension with relation to the axle.

Steve, I have never disassembled the CV Joints of the Porsche, however I have done it many times with the Fiat and Alfa Romeo half shafts and never had an issue.

The CV Joints have basically five components:

1) Inner part of the bearing (with the splines for the half shaft)
2) Steel balls
3) Outer part of the bearing (with the holes for the flange bolts)
4) Steel circlip (..?) that keeps the CV joint assembly on the shaft
5) Rubber boot

When you complete disassemble and clean the CV joint, you will be able to inspect the races where the steel balls move, you will be able to easily see if the races on the inner and outer part of the CV joint are worn (or not smooth), IF one of them is worn most likely some of the balls are pitted as well.

I have mixed inner and outer sections (in good condition) without any issues.

As a matter of fact the times I had issues was caused by loose bolts (the ones that attach the CV Joint to the (hub or tranny) flanges, but that was my own fault..

PS: After removing the circlip from the shaft, you can remove the CV Joint and by rotating the inner section on it's axis allows you to separate the inner and outer sections of the bearing, just don't loose the balls... :p

This is how I test them. Most axles I come across are in good shape. Specially the S axles because they have much larger CV joints.

This sounds like a good test to me. Of course it should not be clicking when driven. My 928 developed a click that I noticed a low speed while backing into my driveway. The boots looked good, but one end of one was a bit loose and water poured out when I took the boot off. Even though there was plenty of grease still in there all the components were rusty. The other CV joint on the same half-shaft looked fine, but when I cleaned it to repack it with grease I found a gouge in the inner race that looked like a manufacturing defect that had been uncovered as the joint wore. Had to change both joints.

Thanks for the feedback all. I bought new shafts for the job. Hopefully the current shafts are okay and I can reboot and grease them, then either save them for future use or even sell them to make back some of the cost of the new shafts. I have not heard any clicking coming from them or anything abnormal. Once I get the job done, I'll pull these apart and if they are good to go I'll order in the new boots, clamps and grease.

Hopefully OE new shafts.