TOYOTA OWNERS! Never Replace Your Leaky Axle | Fix Them Instead!

your mechanic comes to you and tells you your axle is leaking let's go and replace an axle in most other manufacturers that's fine but in Toyota Land If you compare aftermarket to original axles there's difference is Monumental and usually people when they put an aftermarket one they are concerned of vibration and problems and then the axle fails prematurely Toyota axles are really well made I mean the cheapest axles like four or five hundred dollars compared to a hundred dollar for an aftermarket one folks do not fall for this one don't change your original Axle just because it started leaking grease because Toyota axles are high quality and so are their parts you can actually buy a kit that looks like this that comes with the boots it comes with the grease comes with all new clamps to replace that the only thing is if the axle has been leaking for a very long time and it already is making noises in that case you have no choice there's already damage so we have a 2013 Sienna here let's put it up in the air let's look at the leaking axle and then we'll take it out we'll replace the boots so you can see how this process unfolds let's start so if we look at this axle right here we have grease you can see it clearly right here there's plenty of Grease leaking out of this one now some folks will say that this is not a lot of leak folks let's establish a criteria here axles should leak nothing literally they should be completely dry when you start seeing a very small amount of leakage that's the time to fix them you don't want to wait for all the grease to come out the axle runs dry water goes in destroys the axle before you do something about it that's the case with Toyota and Lexus having said that let's get the wheel off let's get this axle out of here and we'll replace the boots so we're gonna get our axle nut out of here but first I want to get the speed sensor wire loose because these are notorious to get pulled when you pull the the whole knuckle to get the axle out let's take our 10 here and then take our 12 here as well now that is loose I have plenty of room to move around now if you watch my videos on I think we did a wheel bearing I told you these you're better off just grinding the top and replacing the axle nut so that's what we're going to do here if Arrows with stand back there's gonna be a lot of sparks flying right now [Music] that weakens that area where it's crimped this is a 30 millimeter 12 point socket comes right out this is the area you weaken see how it broke always replace these they're not really expensive and you end up you could risk damaging the whole thread on the axle and that's not good let's see if this axle wants to cooperate yes it does if it doesn't you can get a chisel right here tap it in just so it's free from from The Hub let's get our ball joint loose which says 317. Two Nuts and one bolt this is pretty much every single Toyota like 90 of them now you're gonna hang from the control arm the whole thing to be free push our axle through just like so then this is going to be in our way when we get the axle out so here is something you can do you get a tie strap just like this one some colors are easier than others to tie it to the I usually tie them right here anywhere where you can get a good grip on them in my case I'm going to tie it to the Rack in your case and I want to be in kind of if you're diying this on the garage floor you want to be a little Ingenuity in how you're going to tie this because this would really help you that's it don't go too far because remember you're kind of putting stress on the suspension so you don't want to go too far just enough to hold it out of your way now let's lift the car and I'll talk to you about a couple things kind of a trick to doing these without causing more problems so let's talk about the axles the driver's side you can pop the axle off not pretty difficult if you're doing it on the floor it's a little difficult you just put the pry bar and pop it Toyotas do not have like another bolt or a lock pin or whatever they just pop out circlip the passenger side is always a tricky one and for some odd reason this is just how the cars like to mess with us always the passenger side is the one to go you have Toyota's Wars probably one of the worst designs they've ever had you have this bearing in bracket now there's nothing wrong with that design but the problem is you will rarely be able to get this bearing out of this bracket you'll end up destroying the bearing destroying the bracket or usually both so here is how we're going to do this without adding cost to the customer without adding more complication to our life because we're trying to fix a problem here not create a new one we don't really need to get this section of the axle out we only are doing boots we're doing both inner and outer always do both inner and outer never do just one that's a mistake so we're going to actually loosen the the clamp on the boot right here you see the clamp right here we're going to take that off pull half the axle leave the rest of it in the car and then when we go back we're going to clamp the axle the clamp right here and life is good because we really have no business anywhere doing in here we won't disturb the bearing we won't disturb the axle seal and the trans and sometimes in cars the less you disturb the better so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to turn the axle the best way to turn it well when you're standing underneath the car is to turn the other wheel it'll turn it we have the crimp this is a crimp point you will have to fight it a little bit you're gonna get a kind of side Cutters grab it from here and we'll go back and forth remember we're not worried about damaging the boot because we're replacing it same thing with the clamp there we go here's first clamp gone now we can actually pull our good do not mix the clamps do not throw them yet even though you have new ones and I'll tell you why if we come and look at this clamp I'm going to try my best here to show you just find it on the original clamps arrows we're going to really want to show this do you see that 102.5 that is actually the diameter off this clamp so in case you damage a clamp and you don't have one you can actually go aftermarket these clamps are nothing these are not made by Toyota they're just standard CV boot clamps this is the size you're going to want but equally when we go in the kit they're all going to be numbered like that and this is the size that you're going to use for each one they look similar but they're completely different so be careful that's why I tell you keep them in an order where you know which one went where so when you pull this this axle now it's just going to come right out you're actually gonna dribble grease because remember we're leaking on this side not this side but even if you are leaking you're still going to have some grease so you might want to put a catch pan or something and that's what I'm going to do here try not to make a mess as much as possible another thing I usually do is put an absorbent mat right underneath it so we can limit the mess that happens with this now that we got it to this point we're going to start the mess basically going to push the boot a little bit there we go excels out and it's going to make a massive mess this is one of the messiest jobs you will possibly ever do the only thing other thing is if you're doing like wheel bearings on a line Cruiser the old school line cruiser with you know the two bearings and the adjustments and whatnot that's going to be a Messier job and this is the next one so we're going to take this to our vise I'm going to clamp it really well we're going to take the other clamp again we're going to put these clamps together these are the inners we put them to the side because when we get to these they're different now it would be a good idea to do some cleaning when I mean cleaning is going to be a messy cleaning so get a lot of Rags start cleaning the center you're not going to get this to kind of shiny and new leave the grease that's already in there but be ready because this grease will go on your clothes will go in your workspace and you do not want this to end up in the customer car seats because they're not going to be very happy so there is a clip try to rotate it so you can see the end of it there is a clip right here that holds the spider some people like to call it that this clip you need to remove it in order to remove the spider we're going to use a tool like this and I'll try to find similar this is from Matco Tools I'm going to try to find similar kind of budget friendly tools to do this because there are a couple special tools here I'm gonna remove this clamp here it is this gets replaced it comes with the kit we're going to replace it now we arrive at a tricky part of this job this spider is splined into the axle it depends how your car is if this is a 20 year old car that's been this is the original axle usually you just grab it comes right out because it's all worn it's been rattling around forever but if this is a very new car you're going to have a battle this is a medium car this car has around 200 000 miles it's going to be a slight battle and bear with me because I remember when arrows started working in the shop he told me I never thought mechanics use hammers as much and yes we do because some things just don't like to come out the way they should you're gonna put a rag over this and you're gonna tap the edges kind of alternating back and forth you're now I'm not wailing at it you notice you do not want to whale at it foreign as you hammer on this you're going to want to grab these you do not want one of these to come flying out because we have a problem then you want to keep them inside as you tap this gives you a little bit of cushion because you also don't want to damage the surface of this there are other ways to do it and I'm noticing this one is not moving so let's let's increase the force here foreign foreign and this is not moving at all you see where the clip goes it's not moving at all so we're going to need to give ourselves a little bit more rope razor blade be very careful with the razor blades we're going to cut the boot Slide the boot down be careful because this is going to be messy you already see the grease all over the place it's going to start dribbling and make a huge mess so this is a messy job like I told you now we have better access let's try this did it move it did not move see when you get to this case this is a stubborn one that does not want to move so we're going to have to do a little bit of persuasion and the persuasion comes in the form of an air hammer first thing we're going to want to do is actually push it down sometimes that little vibration is enough to break them loose so we're going to be as nope this one is in for the fight so we're gonna go from the bottom and try to push it up there it goes just the way it works I don't think you guys will have an air hammer but you can grab a chisel and start hammering at it until it starts moving then you can continue to tap it the idea is you do not want these these kind of bearings that that wobble around to come out because they come out if the bearing comes apart that's it we might never be able to get this back together so be careful whenever you're doing something put your hand around the spider something more important do not flip your spider you take it out of here put it exactly how you took it out and it goes back the same way now now come the easy part or the easy messy I call it we're gonna get this uh this mess out kind of grab it with a rag and immediately to the garbage because you see how much grease there is here we're going to replace all that grease now I'm gonna move to the inner boots inner boot same thing we're going to let both clamps off there's one we're going to keep them together so we know which one is which there we go I usually like to make a cut in these boots before you take them off that way you can slide them off much easier because remember we got rust we got all kinds of stuff on the axle and that's normal let's open it up put it up at the bottom and there we go now you saw how much grease was there on the other side this side we're running pretty low because this is the side that was leaking folks you saw the leak it was not bad at all but this is how we end up with not a lot of Grease I mean look at the CV joints here there's not really a lot of Grease this is where you want to inspect it if you see rust all over the place stop abort time to get a new axle but if you see nothing looks like this does have low grease but we're not completely dry and I don't see rust that means we didn't get water in here at some point then we're good I'm gonna clean it up a little bit you'll never be able to clean this 100 so don't try to clean the inside because uh you'll be here for days and you'll still arrive at the same result now haven't said that let's open our kit here's the outer Boot and the way you tell them this is round this has the protrusions for the spider bearings you're going to have two different greases and here's some news for you in my entire career with Toyota we tried to get an answer which grease goes where and the answer we always got is oh this one goes in the internet this one goes in the outer and the next time we ask opposite the bottom line is they're both identical almost this one is a little bit more watery than this one and the way I have been doing it for the longest time is the watery one goes here the thick one goes on the on the inner one this is the outer one so you notice this one is more watery and this one is thicker just by looking at them and they both turn the same because I've taken an axle that we've done this to before they both turn the same so I don't know what's the deal with the two different greases but we're gonna fly with it and they gave you actually two this will vary if you're doing a four runner they'll be different you're doing other models they'll be different now let's look at the clamps and and this is something you want to do at this point if you look at these clams they're almost identical they're actually a different diameter this one is 99.5 this one is 102.5 this is a millimeter folks so this is this 102.5 is the inner one that we took off when we started this job this one is the outer one and you're not going to just go oh yeah this must be it you're gonna verify because man you make a mistake in this all this hard work will go to waste and this one is covered with grease so there we go 99.5 you got to get these right folks you gotta get these right so now that we know what's going on we're going to go ahead and discard this one because we already know that and this card the big one never reuse these by the way let's look at the other clamp from the outer side so I'm going to need a little bit of cleaning this one is 34 millimeters it says it right here 34. let's find our 34. this is 34 and keep it on this side get rid of our 34. and then let's look at this one this one is going to be 39 we're going to find over 39 and I'm going to tell you about something that is interesting you have two clamps extras and these are actually not extras and you got to be very careful this one says 39 on it gonna be really hard to say this is a really good small writing I can barely see it with my own eyes I have good Vision at least according to Mrs Car Care not this one says 38.8 now technically you could use the 38.8 but don't because it's too tight the reason they have this extra clamp yeah I'm gonna keep throwing it in here the reason they have this extra clamp is for models that have a balance weight some models will have a balance weight right here on the second shaft because it's too long it needs a balance weight that clamp is actually for that balance weight in this case of the Sienna we do not have that balance weight so we're going to discard this clamp but in the models that use the same part number this is something Toyota figured let's make one part number if it's multiple models because most of them are the same but we'll put that clamp so I usually keep these clamps just you know stash them somewhere because it's a good climb it's brand new you never know so these some of these clamps can be interesting we're going to take our first boot [Applause] make sure this sits right and some of you will now say well why don't you put some lubricant to make this easier don't so you have the axle already fell that's just the paint don't because then it won't seal right and this has a Groove all these boots they have a Groove and the axle and groove in the inside you'll know when they sit they just stop moving we're going to take our clamp we're going to do our first clamp now there are multiple tools to do this I will show you the one that is kind of on more on the economical side and I'll show you the right tool to use for this job all right this is a crimping tool all it does is it goes on that clamp squeezes it and compresses it and hopefully you will put two half inch breaker bars and compress this to compress the clamp but actually this is the correct tool for Toyota Land This is actually a Toyota tool looks tiny looks nothing to it it's extremely expensive and really makes no sense for you to buy a DIY so maybe you will have to resort to using this one but the idea is simple you use the correct tool because I want to do this right for the customer here 's a 10 millimeter the idea is we want to compress this almost to a point where the two ends are touching this is going to be a little difficult to show but the two ends inside are almost touching it's going to be really hard to do this with this because you're putting all your Force this is short you put two breaker bars now you're wobbling all over the place this just doesn't work well so fortunately if you're doing this DIY you have no choice use that try your best be patient with it don't don't twist the clamp as soon as you twist these clamps they come flying off of their garbage so now we're going to flip this axle around and we're gonna put the Grease You're not gonna put the grease in the joint because then it's going to dribble all over the place you're going to put your grease in the boot and as you drive this car the first time it'll actually spread everywhere and pull this down load it up with grease put the whole pouch and it was good something you want to try to do and it's really difficult is not leave grease here I wanna it's never gonna happen because this grease gets everywhere and that's kind of by Design now that this is seated again it has that Groove you can give it a good wipe and put our clamp the more cleaning you do now the less residual spray you're going to have later there's our clamp now I am OCD you don't actually have to do this but uh that's just how I have done it all the years you want to put the clamps in line it doesn't really make a difference this is not a requirement the factory ones aren't sometimes not even like that but you want to put the crimps of the clamps as much as possible in line I don't know it just makes me sleep better at night but it is not required so in case you see the factory ones like that don't think that they're defective they're not see the cool thing about this tool is you can't over tighten it because these two blocks stop you from over tightening it you're going to get to the exact correct pressure and it just stops you pretty cool that's why it's a the Toyota tool was really well engineered works really well this tool have seen a lot of axles over the years we've had it for a very long time every Toyota dealership by the way has that tool that's a required tool from Toyota every dealership has to have that tool although my brother and sometimes like to not use it and use this because they're too lazy to go get it but we'll get past that first thing you do here put your inner clamp because once you put this down can't get it anymore so we're gonna roll this down until it sets that this one does not have that big that single groove it has like a spot there we go don't tighten your clamp yet because remember we got to put our spider in and this is going to be a fight to put it in as well so let's try it with good foreign almost there almost there I'll show you how you know when you're there [Music] yeah here's how you know when you're there the groove of the snap ring shows up that's how you know you're there now the kit came with two more things one of them is the snap ring that goes right here let's put it on before we forget very simple to put on just kind of stretch the one side and it'll fight you of course there we go make sure this turns if it doesn't turn it's not seated properly that's it this is not going anywhere although uh you're going to need an air hammer to get it out but still some of these come right out some of these you'll grab them they'll come right out you forget this we have major safety issues because this axle could come flying out so the second one is actually the circlip for the axle going into the trans so the way this works is this gets compressed as it goes into the transmission and then when it there's a small area then it opens up as the axle goes into the trans this compresses and when it clears this that small area it expands and it kind of locks the axle from flying out the trans but when you pull it this actually compresses again and then the axle comes out they want you to replace this but I do not recommend it because once you stretch these you'll never be able to put it back in the trans and you'll be fighting it for hours if you didn't damage the original one leave it and if you do want to replace it do not stretch this too much or deform it because then you'll never be able to put your axle in now we got to this point we're going to spread our spiders without pushing them because you gotta line up the boot before we clamp this so the idea is if you look at the boot we have an open section and then this little hump this hump goes between the spiders just like you see here humps are in between the spiders you don't want to clamp it like this because then you'll never be able to get it on you want to clamp it more like this this looks pretty good to me I'm going to go ahead and get this started just so you see how this tool Works we're going to still clamp it final with that you're gonna grab it kind of pull now this clamp is very soft so you can actually go all the way but I still don't like to do that there we go now you got to this point and come the tricky very very tricky part first thing we're going to do is we're going to put our clamp onto the car and this is going to be the interesting part let's get this out of here you're gonna put it over this because you're gonna put your axle in and then clamp it in the car so if you don't want to pass this clamp all over the whole axle which which will not fit on the back put it on first having said that we do have one more thing to do and this is possibly the messiest part of this job we have the Grease still you're gonna put one here and in a perfect world you put the other one on the other side but if I put the other one in the other side it's going to just dribble out immediately so I'm going to put both of them here when you spin the axle it's going to distribute it everywhere so if you're doing the driver's side where you got the whole axle out you actually have the other piece of the axle you can put the grease both sides put it in put the clamp and then put installer in the car but in this case because we don't want to disturb that bearing it usually never comes out we're going to put all our grease here just kind of spread it over the spiders basically make the mess you cleaned up earlier there we go so let's look at something so you can kind of visualize this do you see how the shape of that is where the axle goes do you see the three lines almost one of them is here one of them is here the other one is at the bottom these are the three rollers are gonna go just you're not going to be able to see this I want to show you now before we install the axle this is where you're going to line them up so let's without further Ado let's do this foreign ERS in they're gonna still pop out but push them in and let's do this Give It Up a little push make sure you're lined up sometimes this will go sometimes we have to do a little bit of persuasion do not wear like this with a real Hammer use a rubber one and do not you're not expect I'm not expecting this to go with a lot of force there it was you just have to give it a little bit of gentle persuasion we're gonna get the axle started in the spindle without letting it pop because once you start it it goes this way and now it pops out of there got our ball joint started now the axle is sitting straight let's try to get that boot again and this is becoming very difficult with the filming because I'm trying to show you gotta make sure that the boot sits uniformly across so when you spin it it's even do you see how the top of that is even it's not going in and out that means it's sitting straight not crooked so now we're going to move our clamp and this is where problems could happen sometimes when you put your clamp on it could pop it out it's positional clamped down so now that we got everything situated the clamp I want you to see it the clamp sitting here it is loose we haven't tightened it yet one thing about these you got to be careful with when you tighten this clamp you got to put your hand at the top and make sure it doesn't slide off because they love to do that I'm gonna actually use this one to start is this this gets in here easier and I have better control just to start the crimp see it loves to happen this is what you want to watch out for it not to happen oh sorry my hand is blocking your view but uh actually this goes in right go I'm putting my hand on top of it to make sure it's secure and we're gonna give it a crimp now that you've got it started it's not sliding anymore it's not going anywhere I get our correct tool in here foreign that is our last crimp now come the massive cleaning this whole mess I mean look at my gloves look my body this makes a huge mess brake cleaner clean it all up spin it clean it spin it clean it put a new axle nut tighten everything back and you're all set now let's talk about some exceptions to this and in some of the odds and ends about doing this job on other models because I would like to make my videos Universal 2014 and up at least some of them and most likely 2017 this is not verified because there was a change at some point Highlander as well when it went to the 2grfks in 2017. the inner part the inner boot got changed so you have the two-piece boot one piece clips on and then the boot became just a normal round one be careful for these because they can be really tricky to put on the other one is Sequoias Because by the way if you're doing a full Runner it's exactly the same older Sequoias like first generation Sequoia especially the first few years the spider deal was completely different you had actually to me they seem easier but they can be tricky that's the one exception otherwise every single Toyota Under the Sun at least the modern ones that love to have leaky CV boots they're exactly the same as you've seen in his videos folks this process doesn't take long it's a simple process it is I'm not going to say it is DIY but if you're really that good DIY this is a DIY job to a point having a lift really makes this a lot easier if you're having the entire axle out of the car it makes it a lot easier because you notice how we struggle to line that thing up because I'm trying to get you to get see the best shots and this can get a little tricky but otherwise it's really straightforward this axle on this minivan has 200 000 miles you saw the inside of it it was perfectly fine why would you replace a perfectly fine Axle just because we have a little rip on the boot with a horrible aftermarket one or worse pay five six hundred dollars for a new axle from Toyota when the old axle is perfectly fine and it will probably go another 200 000 miles bearing you know let it leak or you hit curbs at high speeds and kind of damage things that's not the normal operating conditions folks I hope this video was helpful informative I hope you learned something new if you like it consider giving a thumbs up if you're not a subscriber consider subscribing to the channel check out some of my other videos and until the next video folks may the Lord bless you and keep you and you have yourself a wonderful day

Channel: The Car Care Nut

Views: 2,070,433

Keywords: toyota, toyota axle, cv boot, toyota repair, never do this to your toyota, toytota owners, lexus owners, don't do this to your toyota, toyota axle leak, toyota cv joint, toyota cv boot kit replacement, toyota axle replacement, the car care nut, car care nut, should you fix your toyota, toyota mechanic, toyota technician, scotty kilmer, car wizard, rainman ray, south main auto, toyota camry 2022, toyota maintenance, toyota sienna, toyota highlander, toyota 4runner

Id: YH5Cf7uJV5Y

Length: 39min 25sec (2365 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 15 2022