[drwillb]

Finally, made some headway now that the pool's closed, the boat's on land, and the boy is back in school.

In September, I had a few hours to tinker on a Saturday (while closing the pool) so I figured I'd tackle replacing the CV boots. As you can see in the picture below, not so good, and both sides were in the same condition. Disassembly was a piece of cake and cleaning everything off just took some brake cleaner and paper towels. I took pictures while taking things apart but I did make two mistakes putting the joints back together. The first mistake was just dumb: there are "V" grooves where the big ball bearings run in the inner and outer rings of the joint. My mistake was not lining up the "V's" staggered. It's kind of hard to explain unless you're in there and if you don't do it right, you'll never get all the balls back in. I got the first joint together no problem. The second joint ate up a couple of hours and I set it aside for about 3 weeks. Once I saw the "V" thing, I was able to put it back together quickly. Second mistake: a big one. The inner ball race has a step cut into the splines. This side should slide onto the axle first, I put them backwards and resorted to Thor's Hammer to get things seated.

Having gotten the axles back together, assembling the subframe was fairly easy and it helped quite a bit to have the nuts and bolts pre-assembled onto each control arm. Everything just bolted up, no swearing necessary. I'm leaving the calipers and rotors off until after the subframe is bolted up in order to keep the weight down. All up weight is around 300 lbs. I'll also put in new parking brake shoes and backing plates before adding the rotors and calipers (caliper were rebuilt in September).

I had bought 2 dollys at Home Depot some weeks back. I'll use these and some wood to create a cradle for the assembly, then push it into a corner until Spring. This will give me time to double check I've got everything I need to bolt up the subframe and driveshaft.