The other day, I noticed that the CV axle boots on my Mercedes 190E were all dry and cracked. I ordered 4 replacement boots and disassembled the axles this weekend. The inner joints were OK. But when I pulled back the boot on the outer joints, I found out that the shaft were severely rusted:
[img]https://i.imgur.com/d567k8ml.jpg[/img]
It looks like rust dissolved the shaft? But on the other hand, I can't believe that both axles rusted exactly at the same spot and that this shaft was of a constant diameter before. The shaft is 25 mm OD on the clean sections and 20-21 mm OD on the thinner part of the damaged section. Also, rust/water seems to have found a way in the joint:
I cleaned that up and the grease near the joint seems good. The outer joint seems to be "non-serviceable". You cannot buy just the joint and I hammered on that "cup" lip to remove it for long and it doesn't bulge. Considering new axles (or even reman) are NLA, I took the first axle, cleaned/removed as much of the old grease and dirt I could from the outer joint, put new grease and installed a new boot. I reassembled and re-greased the inner joint too.
Would you run it? Will it last or will it snap in half? Do you know a source for Mercedes 190E CV axles?
