Yes folks this is another article on the routine maintenance that has to be done on the car we love and hate at the same time, the Scion Tc. While this car has been rather reliable compared to just about everything else on the lot including the Tracker, when it does come time to do some major repairs, some of those repairs end up being a pain in the balls. In this case that pain in the balls repair is the replacement of the CV axle.
If you remember a while back when we replaced the passenger side CV axle, we ended up doing some Mickey Mouse shit when we left the inner portion of the axle in the transmission and basically disassembled the new axle to allow us to install the new axle into the older inner portion, then replaced the inner boot over the thing to complete the fix. That more or less worked, but now it was time to replace the driver's side CV. I even took time to buy a puller tool, which is a U shaped claw with a threaded point to screw a slide hammer into to allow you to claw around the inner hub of the axle then slide the hammer out to more or less linear pound the axle out from the transmission. Its funny but everything leading up to the point where I had to pull the inner hub of the CV axle out was smooth sailing. After the tire came off, the ball joint came off with two nuts and one bolt. The tie rod end nut came off and the tie rod knocked out fast. The two big ass bolts for the strut came off fast. Even the clamps for the brake and wheel sensor lines came off fast, allowing me to get the spindle loose. With the battery impact wrench the CV nut came off fast too. As you can see in the pic, the main problem was the inner boot pretty much disintegrated, allowing all grease to get slung out from the innards of the axle, allowing excessive wear. As you can figure, we ended up separating the CV axle, leaving the inner hub in place in the transmission yet again....just in case. I wanted to leave my options open if I have to do a repeat of the passenger side axle. Problem number one came when I tried to put the axle remover tool in place on the inner hub. At first I wondered if the thing had to be tapped in place to seat it, which wasn't happening due to the complete lack of clearance around the hub and the transmission. Then just for shits and giggles, I took the new CV axle and measured the tool against the inner hub on the new axle, only to find out the inner hub was much wider than the tool. What to do? By this time I was already pissed off and rather than do something that might be gravely expensive, I did the least expensive thing, which was take the die grinder to the remover tool. I cut out enough metal from both sides of the U to widen the spacing to allow me to slide the tool between the inner hub and the surface of the transmission. I attached the slide hammer and after some rather rigorous slide action beating the shit out of the tool and the transmission, I finally got the inner hub to pop out. With the old inner hub out, I was able to slide the new axle in place but still had to lightly tap the end of the threaded shaft with the hammer to get the snap ring to give way to allow the axle to pop into the transmission. I left the axle nut on so I could use the impact wrench to walk the nut off over the damaged end of the threads in order to clean them up. No harm, no foul. With the axle technically in, I was able to reassemble everything in reverse, just as fast as I disassembled everything. With everything together, fresh oil in the transmission, I put the tire back on and took the car for a test drive to verify all was well, which it was. One more PITA job done on this car, hopefully for a good while.
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