I torqued mine on the ground. Chock the wheels, tranny in gear and e-brake on hard.

Thanks all. Not a bad job at all. Rehabbing the CV joints is kind of fun, as long as you have plenty of disposable rubber gloves, newspaper, and paper towels. I can see buying a new axle if you want to be on the road quickly, and then refurbishing the old one as a spare. Otherwise, I'd just replace the torn boot, provided the joint hasn't deteriorated.

The only annoying part was torquing the bolts connecting the inner boot to the transaxle. The Bentley manual lists the torque at 60 lb-ft, which seems to me a bit high. At least I can't think of putting that much torque on those 8mm allen bolts w/o stripping them. Wayne's book lists the torque for the 6x8mm bolts as 34 ft-lbs, which sounds about right.

The massive Autozone torque wrench worked brilliantly for the axle nut.

60 lbs/ft is for 10mm bolt CVs. 34 is right for the 8mm kind. Not all sources of information have everything right all the time, Porsche included. One must use his head.

I torque with a wheel on the axle, because I can hold it while lying under the car. That way I can rotate the wheel from that position to have the best angles with the hex bit and wrench. This for the 32 lb/ft jobbies - I don't know if this would work at 60 lbs/ft, but a pry bar through the studs should hold things.

Just saw this now. As far as orientation it looks right. The only other thing is that the raised side of the star goes to the inside:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1423434836.jpg

I chose to torque the big nut down while the car was still on jack stands as I didn’t feel like putting the wheel on sans center cap, torquing down, remove wheel, etc.

I did not recheck the big nut torque later on as there is nothing that I can think of that would compress or stretch that might loosen the nut.

Glad the tips helped and that you were successful. You hitting the checkeditout show in Chicago in September? I’m heading to Milwaukee to meet a bunch of air cooled guys then cruising down for it. We all entered our cars. :)

Thanks for the feedback. Good to hear that I assembled the "rubics cube" correctly, as it is already installed :)

Didn't know about the checkeditout event at all. Might be fun.

Looks more like crud on the boots, clean them up, they usualy last a very long time.

You can clean out the old grese and push in some new to increase the life span on the cvs IF you dont have a lot of play in them.

A little "fun fact / tip"...
- CV joints predominantly wear on one side of each race because the axle is rarely loaded in reverse. The balls normally wear evenly because they are free to rotate in any direction. You can extend the life of the CVs by swapping the axles side to side to start using the mostly unused side of the races.

(If you are running insane power levels there may be an issue with reversing the torque direction on the axles. Not sure. But that is beyond most of us 'mortals'."

This is correct.

I've always torqued the big axle nut with that side of the car on a jack stand (but not up high). I have a tool made for VWs - a longish rectangular cross section hollow steel piece welded to a plate with a bunch of 14mm holes in it. Fit this to the wheel studs so your torqueing will push the long end against the garage or other floor, and torque away.

You can do much the same with, say, a crow bar through the studs.

I think it is prudent to recheck the torque on the nut after some road miles. Sometimes the bearing didn't get installed all the way in against its stop in the banana arm. Driving may seat it fully, leaving things a little loose. I think it not uncommon to find you can turn the nut a little at this point.

Or not - if the bearing was chilled, the banana well heated, and the bearing plopped solidly in with no extra persuasion, maybe all is well.