'93 Rodeo 4x4 front axle rebuild?

[ron1]

Can you tear apart and just rebuild the outer front cv axles on the '93 4x4 Rodeos? My son doesn't have to money for a new axle and would like to try to fix it himself without dropping the whole front axle assembly. Thank for any info.
Ron

[amigo-2k]

http://www.4x4wire.com/forums/postli...t=&Board=UBB86

try posting your question to the above site.

There are a lot more 4x4 gear guys there.

[Cat Fuzz]

Originally Posted by ron1

Can you tear apart and just rebuild the outer front cv axles on the '93 4x4 Rodeos? My son doesn't have to money for a new axle and would like to try to fix it himself without dropping the whole front axle assembly. Thank for any info.
Ron

Short answer: YES.

Long answer: Its not as straight forward as most other cars that have CV axles. Usually on most cars, you can remove the axle nut and seperate the lower ball joint and remove the axle with both inner and outer CV joints atatched. This isn't the case with our Rodeo's. I'll try to explain as best I can.

Raise vehicle and place securely on jack stands.
Remove wheel.
Carefully remove the hub assembly so that parts don't get mixed up or turned around.
Ok, tricky part #1: Holding the axle shaft in place on the very end of it is a little spring clip that sits in a groove on the axle. Its a pain to remove unless you have a tool for removing spring clips. It can be done without the tool, if your very patient, have three hands and some small durable flathead screwdrivers. Once you get that off you can remove the brake rotor assembly. Oh, remove the brake caliper first, of course.
Now, to get the axle out of the truck, you will have to seperate BOTH upper and lower ball joints from the steering knuckle. A standard pickle fork won't work. Get a long pry bar and a big hammer. Place the pry bar between steering knuckle and the control arm and smack the side where the ball joint stud goes thru and it should pop out. Repeat to seperate the other ball stud.
The outer CV joint is a unit, but the inner CV joint has to come apart to get the axle out of the truck.
In other words, the outside of the inner CV joint stays in the truck. You can carefully cut the clamps off and reuse the inner boot (since the inner boots don't see nearly as much wear as outer ones) or you can just cut the boot off and replace. If you opt to save the boot, you'll need to buy new clamps and an extra pack of grease so you can clean and repack it.
Tricky part #2. To get the inner CV joint apart, there is a large wire clip on the inside that you can remove with a flat head screw driver. It's very well hidden by grease. Took me awhile to figure it out. The innards of the inner CV joint will slide out with the axle shaft once that clip is removed.

Now, I can't remember if I was able to seperate the outer CV joint from the shaft or if I removed the inner cage and bearings. Now that I think about it, I didn't do either of those. I saved my inner boots and reclamped them so I didn't have to remove either joint from the shaft.

I think thats it. Have fun!