I'm replacing my wheel studs and i'm ready to assemble everything back together, but the axle seems to have pulled out from the inner joint area.

I tried wiggling it back in but no luck....Any suggestion? Will i have to remove the entire axle out and remove the boot?

This job has been a major PITA so far...

 

You can sit there and fight with it for an hour or two and hopefully get it to pop, or you can just cut the boot and look at it. Only thing that sucks is you'll obv have to replace at the the band you cut on the boot later. I have done it both ways. It's a major pita.

 

Thanks for the reply. Sigh..... I always hated working anything that involves touching the axle.

So i have to remove the axle, cut the band for the boot, align it there and reinstall the axle correct?

 

Inside the boot it is shaped like a Y, there is a bearing on each point of the Y, they don't sit at the outer edge, they seat a lil bit in from the ends, so if you can feel for bearings around you might be able to slide it in... At least that's how I remember it from my gd3 after cutting the band

 

^^thats how I remember it too. If that's where it came apart, that's what you're gonna have to do. Search "axle help" on here. There are a couple threads about it. One was mine when I did the same thing.

 

Thanks guys for the great help. !!!

 

This happened in my 02 Civic Si. I didn't have to cut the band or boot. They make a tool that will take it off and put it back on. Yeah, you really have to be carefull with the axel.... Good Luck.

 

Ok i got the driver side axle off, and cut the band off and everything went well after that. I got picture of it too for future people if needed. Dont know why i couldn't get that thing to go back in knowing such a simple design....





Now im having trouble with the passenger side axle. Dont know what you call it... a half shaft? Not really sure how you remove that. Do you pry it off like other ones? I tried giving a try with a flat head and the silver outer ring part seemed to come out a little. Dont know if thats part of the axle and it slides off with it but i just wanted to make sure.

 

We had the same problem, just line it up just right to get it back in.

I did loose some grease when I cut the band off, does anyone out there know what type of grease is in there? I asked 3 dealerships and they didn't seem to know cause they tried to sell me something that did not look what was in there. I lost about a 1/3 of the grease.

I heard mixing different types of grease is bad and I would prefer to just "top it off" than have to clean the entire assembly.

 

i would just use some high temp wheel bearing grease you can pick up at any automotive parts store.

 

Thx so much for all the useful info here.

I had the same issue.....Inner driver CV joint pulled out while replacing struts.
Ultimately was able to get it back in, but it was a real PITA. Here' my experience:

I tried to turn and push it in w/ the boot on, but it would only go in part way (if your solo, put it in neutral for a manual, get under the car and rotate the inner cup right next to the tranny by hand until, you can push the axle in half way, but it probably wont go further.

After a half hour of not getting it to go beyond half in, I finally ended up cutting off the CV boot from the transmission to really see what was going on. Be careful doing this, have a clean surface underneath, as the bearings are liable to fall off their axle rods on the axle, and grit must absolutely be kept off of them.

Even w/ the boot pulled back, I tried several times to get it beyond the half-in point, it seems that the bearings tend to misalign off their axles, preventing further insertion. It eventually just went in. The steering was straight forward and the control arm jacked up to having the axle parallel to the drive when it finally did, but it did take several tries....patience.

There are suggestions if you have an assistant to have both wheels jacked up and rotate the opposite wheel while trying to reengage, but make sure you have the tranny in a gear, as in neutral, the rotation will not translate across it in neutral.

Bottom line to prevent this in the first place when replacing struts is to make sure the top of the wheel assembly is not able to flop outwards. A couple well-placed cinder blocks, or some other method will avoid this.

Hope this helps, Steve