2010 Passenger Side Front Inner CV Boot

[disallow]

I noticed that my inner CV boot was leaking grease all over everything a few weeks ago, and finally had some time this weekend to do a boot replacement.

I've done this job countless times on my other vehicles, mostly Hondas.

There were like a kajillion videos out there about this, including a series from ImStricken06, thanks for that! Wow I don't envy what you had to go through on that one! Fortunately my CV shaft was not fused into the wheel bearing. I won't go into Uber detail on what I did, but will highlight the areas I may have deviated.

I would note that there is definitely a design issue with this short shaft. Too many people have issues with this CV boot. To me it looks like they had to make the driveshaft angle to severe due to their requirement for ground clearance, as well as some of the other constraints they have regarding space in this area.

So some of my notes:

1. I was not able to get the shaft to pop out of the transmission. Honestly, I didn't try that hard. I've had issues with this type of thing before, usually a circlip that is just not in the right position to release the shaft from the transmission. What I was trying to avoid was losing a bunch of transmission fluid, which I didn't have handy.

2. Per #1, I decided, like ImStricken06 did, to rebuild the CV shaft in place. I disassembled the shaft by removing a retaining clip inside the Inner CV Joint Housing and was able to get the shaft out after that and work on it on my work bench. Unlike other CV shafts I've worked on in the past, nothing on the Rogue CV shaft is going to fall out or out of place when you pull it from the CV joint housing, everything is kept in place. (On my civic when I did this, I had roller bearings all over the floor and it took me an hour to find them, then another few hours to clean them and reassemble).

3. Another retaining clip on the end of the shaft allowed me to remove the CV Joint itself, and allowed me to slide the new CV boot into place. Popped the CV joint back on and reinstalled the retaining clip. Super easy.

The real crappy part about this method though, is the crappy band clamps they provided with the EMPI boot kit that I bought. These are 'ear clamps' which I've had great luck with in the past. However, installing them while the CV joint is in place in the car, was a little tricky. And to top it off, it looks like they've gone with even crappier clamps than what I've seen in the past. After buttoning everything up, and driving around for the night, I came home to another mess, as the clamp obviously wasn't tight enough, and the boot popped off. s***.

Now that the clamp was pretty much shredded, I decided to go with a gear clamp I picked up at the local farm supply store, for $1.50. I was able to tighten it much easier with an 8mm wrench, though you do need to be really careful to not overtighten these clamps, they will strip and then won't tighten at all. Also, you need to make sure you have clearance for the gear type clamp, sometimes the space available won't allow for the overhang that a gear clamp has.

I still may replace the gear type clamp, if I can find a better version of the CV boot clamp at my parts store. We shall see, I also have buddies that have run with gear clamps forever, so it may not be necessary.