Longest lasting CV shaft?

[DeepFriar]

Originally Posted By: lubricatosaurus
I'd say raxles.com might be the best quality.
Low cost for an old car: google cardone cv joints and get the shopping results -- cheap!\
https://www.cardone.com/products/drivetrain/drivetrain-products-new/new-cv-drive-axles


Back when I was truly abusing the SE-R I went through three sets of CV's in fairly short order between 65 and 85k miles, two sets from Raxles. Each time Marty, the owner, stood good for them and, as a result, changed his boot supplier to a German vendor and began using synthetic grease (he never told me which one). Long story short, 15 years and 160k miles later, that last set is still on there. Amazing. So it's easy to understand why I would recommend Raxles. Things could have changed in all that time but I continue to hear sporadic good reports and I believe they still don't use reground CV's. Not the cheapest though.

 

[Tegger]

Originally Posted By: mjk
I was just curious to see how long others had CV shafts last on their vehicles....

Original shafts on my '91 Integra lasted about 300,000 miles before two balls in one of the outer joints began breaking up. The joints on both shafts had been rebooted twice in those 300K miles, both replacements being performed before the old boots had broken.

These were the balls. You can tell the bad ones:

This was what the inner race looked like:

This is the outer race (arrow points to scarring on the surface of the race):

The other outer joint and both inner joints were fine.

Just yesterday I rebooted the passenger-side shaft on the daughter's Tercel, which has about 200,000 miles on it. Both joints feel like new.

 

[lubricatosaurus]

Originally Posted By: DeepFriar
Long story short, 15 years and 160k miles later, that last set is still on there. Amazing. So it's easy to understand why I would recommend Raxles. Things could have changed in all that time but I continue to hear sporadic good reports and I believe they still don't use reground CV's. Not the cheapest though.


Marty sent me some raxles 12 years ago with synthetic grease, good experience there. We hope raxles.com is still a decent company, I think they are anyway.

 

[brages]

Originally Posted By: artificialist
Originally Posted By: mjk
My 96 Camry's passenger side shaft is beginning to fail at 248k. 19 years old and 248k isn't bad.

Contrast that to my parent's 1982 K car, which had a CV shaft fail at 30k.

I'm not sure that is a fair comparison. I don't know of any CV lasting over 50,000 miles from the 1980s, even if you had a Toyota.


My 1986 Jetta Diesel was probably in the 275k range when I got rid of it (odometer quit in the mid 200's). No CV issues during my time with it. Not much stress hooked up to a 52hp motor!

1998 Accord got rebooted around 250k, still going good.

 

[vinu_neuro]

You got 248k miles out of the original axles...how about just going with OEM if you plan on keeping the car?

 

[surfstar]

Cheapest price from local auto store with lifetime warranty.
They're not hard to do, so if they ever go out again, just return and replace.

Cost is probably $50ish while OEM/dealer is $300ish, most likely.