help with cvjoints

i was told that the cvjoints on my 85 crx needed to be replaced and i was wondering how hard would this be to do my self and what exactly is involved and if it was to hard for me to do how much does it usually cost to have it done becase the person i take my other cars to does not work on fwd cars.

it is a little bit of work, the two biggest complications will be separating your lower ball joint, if it is really stiff (as they often are) it will turn a 45 minute job into a 2+ hour job, the other is the cv nut (the one in the center of the wheel) they usually are very tight and you will need a good impact wrench to remove it, i have broken a 1/2" wrench and a 1/2" breaking bar trying to remove one before. if you can get around these two complications it's a pretty basic job.

This is how I did it without removing the ball joint.

I'll try not to skip any steps
- Get a big breaker bar to loosen the spindle nut off
Loosen this before removing the tire, if your car is jacked up and you try to take this beast off the car might fall off the back

- After loosening the spindle nut jack the car up and take the tire off as normal

- Take the two bolts to the strut off from the top, under the hood

- Compress the strut as much as possible

- Now you can wrestle with the front hub assembly

- If you pull out the front hub and push it to the back of the car at the same time you can pull the sucker out far enough that you can then angle your CV joint and it will come out.

- Then get under the car with a big crow bar or pickle fork and pop the axle out of the transmission

- Reverse the steps.

If you understand my vague instructions... It now takes me about 30min per side and you don’t have to mess with really taking anything apart or the ball joint. My first time I tried the ball joint and gave up and then I tried this. Took me about 4 hour buy myself for one side…

Hope that helps.
-Dead

i've never tried taking the strut loose in a second or third gen (first gen crx) but i did try that with my brother's 89 crx with no luck because the later ones have an upper control arm as well that causes more troubles. that method should work just as well, if not better, with the first gen crx tho