CV joint primer please
 

I did a search, which was a little tricky since you can't search "cv," to try to figure out what I should do with my CV joints.

During a transmission fluid change this weekend, I noticed that none of my CV boots have a clamp on the small diametered ends. Is this normal? Also, one of the small diametered ends was so loose fitting that grease is leaking past the boot. All of the boots are relatively hard--not as pliable as I imagine they probably should be.

I appear to be mentally slow this morning. All three of my little boys were sick last night, which is not helping with reading comprehension of the threads I found. I was having formulating a systematic approach...so my questions are:

1) What sort of regular maintanance is required on CV joints? My car has about 68,500 miles.
2) Are the boots on my year ('83) supposed to have clamps on the small diameter ends?
3) Can this wait until the winter?
4) What other tips do I need to know?

Sorry this post is so open ended. You can just give me a nasty reply and links to helpful threads if that makes you feel better.

Good luck with the kids.

My thoughts: Yes you can wait until winter. As long as the boot is not torn then you should be okay. Also if you are not hearing any clunking from the rear end then the CVJ's are probably okay. I think 68k miles is well within their normal life span. Mine had 120k and I flipped them to get through this season. I cannot comment on whether the clamp is stock or not. Mine did not have clamps but I did put small zip ties around them after I cleaned and repacked my CVJ's.

As far as regular maintenance I think that a clean and repack every 30k is probably a nice thing to do but I think most folks just leave 'em in and if the boots are in good shape and there's no noise then there's no special attention paid.

That's what I'm talking about, Warren! Thanks.

I'm going to let it slide for now and then dig in over the winter when I redo all my rear suspension bushings.