Replacing Passenger Front Axle

I just had my daughter get a tire rotation and an oil change on my Caravan at Brake Team.
They said The passenger front axle needs replacing because the CV joint boot is leaking. ($165)

How critical is this to replace? What leaks from the CV joint, engine oil?
Will my van be safe to drive without replacing this axle?

Thanks
CL8

The dust boots of the half shafts keep dust out of the constant velocity (CV) joints and keep the large quantities of grease in. If the boot splits, the rotation will sling the grease all over as well as allowing dust, salt, sand, water, etc. to get in to the CV joint and accelerate its wear. Besides making a huge mess, there is a small risk that the grease could get on the brakes and reduce their effectiveness as well. Also if you let it go too long the CV joint could fail which will prevent your Caravan from being able to move under its own power. As you might imagine, that could lead to an accident.

How would you explain to your driver's ed class that you were late to class because you caused an accident?

If $165 covers the cost of the halfshaft and labor to install it, and you trust the shop, that sounds like a very fair cost. You need to get this fixed.

-Rod

If $165 covers the cost of the halfshaft and labor to install it, and you trust the shop, that sounds like a very fair cost. You need to get this fixed.
-Rod

I agree, $165 would be a good price for a complete half shaft installed. But I'm guessing for that price, they are probably going to replace the boot only and maybe even use a split boot so they do not have to remove the shaft at all.
Find out what they are going to do for $165 before you let them touch it. They should at the very least, remove the shaft, clean the joint, repack with grease before installing the boot. Or just install a reman half shaft.

A new/reman half shaft is a faster repair than the cleaning & repacking with a new boot, and in most cases it is a wash in parts versus labor cost. But I'd pot for the new shaft since you don't know how long you've been driving around with an open boot...the damage may already be done and/or you wouldn't know how well the tech would be able to clean the old grease & grime out.

Don't accept a split boot repair, especially for that cost...it is a band-aid at best.

Definitely don't wait on the repair, especially if you have periodic state vehicle inspections...it could cause you to fail and force a repair before you can renew your registration.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for all the advice. I just hope it wont have a problem being driven about 300 miles for Thanksgiving before I get it fixed.