Duralast Axles

Thank you @Cruzer, really appreciate that. I will try to make it down and let you know. Thank you

By the way, I never heard of that event. Good to know. Thank you.

 

Loading the truck

 

I was daunted by my first CV axle job but it was really great knowledge gained. A pain in the ass, sure, if you end up needing one more fucking tool from NAPA, but kinda nice to dig in and really learn how everything down there works and look for other broken or leaky shit. I’ve done four between my toyotas and past subarus.

 

Thank you @Cruzer.

@grave , I think I'm going to try this myself if these ones go again. I can't afford to pay $300+ every time they go on me every 3-4 months. I am good with cars, just feel intimidated by this one

 

Engage 4x4 when you replace the axle so the splines aren't trying to spin around while you try to get it lined up.

 

Dude don’t be. Set aside a weekend and a 12pk

 

Smart

 

What’s up, came to check with everyone and let everyone know that my driver CV separated on me. This happened at the beginning of May while running Poison Spider in Moab. As we suspected, the race cage failed and separated at the outer race.

You’ll be surprised to find that my boots never did fail me nor have they yet. I think it happened when I did a sharp turn locked in 4 low. Because right after I had a straight ascend in shale rock and it kept slipping and quite frankly embarrassing because I tried to move for a good 5 minutes before I asked a buddy to check my wheels and sure enough he confirmed my axle was shot.

So I backed down the straight in reverse about 100 yards to where I took the sharp turn since it was an open area to pull over. The only oversight I had was that I forgot to pack a prybar so had to get creative with pulling the broken portion of the CV out of the differential. But that aside, a quick 40 min job on the side of the trail and I was back in action with my OEM Toyota axle for the rest of the trip.

Once back home, I took the broken axle to autozone and they swapped me out for another one, no questions asked. Took it home and 40 minutes later had it swapped back into the truck so I can continue to use my OEM as trail spares.

As I originally stated in my first post, they served the exact purpose I wanted them for, sacrificial trail axles with a lifetime warranty. My OEM ones will keep getting me home. And what’s 40 minutes, for me not a deal breaker.

 

fuuuu that sucks!

which reminds me...

 

@beehivetundra, that sucks that it happened out there man. But yours seem to have lasted a lot longer than mine did. My passenger side just went on me again 2 weeks ago. This is crazy. I don't even do any off road driving, just city driving and these things keep going on me every few months. I don't understand what the issue is? Could it be the AZ heat maybe? This time I'm going to try and do it myself since it's only the one side.

 

Oh wow, again! what kind of lift are you on? I wonder if you have a more aggressive CV angle than I do and that’s causing them to fail? Is it the boots separating or tearing? Or is it the actual joints separating and losing the bearings?

 

Just the top part of the boot keeps opening like the photos attached. The lift kit is 2 inches and the shocks add 1 inch to that for a total of 3 inches.

 

You sure that spacer on top is only 2" of lift??
It looks 2" thick, which would yield more like 3-4" of lift.

 

That's the info the previous owner gave me so I'm not sure.

 

Not sure if I'm doing this correctly, but this is what I can see with my measuring tape.

 

Those are likely the 3" Daystar leveling blocks. I don't see any 2" available from them. If you have an additional 1" lift in your front shock / coilover setup, then you're at 4" of lift in the front and likely need extended axles? What front shocks are you running? Side pic of your truck?

 

Hopefully these will help. Thank you

 

That’s a lot of lift.

 

Yeah, that's a lot more than 3" of lift. This is probably why the boots keep tearing. You'll need to put some high angle boots on there like the Porsche ones.

 

Are there any CV Axles recommendations for a 4" lift?

 

OEM or RCV. Aftermarket (parts store) might use tripod joints which have less articulation, which is no good for with your lift. If you're just tearing the boot repeatedly and not screwing up the joint, reboot with a Porsche 930 CV boot or similar. Has more ribs and won't tear as easily.

If I were you though, I'd just take out the spacer lift and most of your headaches will be solved.

 

@des2mtn, thank you for that info. Will taking the spacers out cause issues with the size of the tires I have on right now?

 

No, a common misconception is that spacers or certain lifts will help you clear larger tires. At the bare minimum what this lift will do, is raise your truck's ride height and minimize the amount of contact events for the tires, while limiting the truck's suspension capability. Some lifts incorporate a bumpstop spacer to prevent these contact events, but the trade off with that is that bumpstop is reducing your shock travel.

One thing with a spacer lift, the shock can become the limiting factor for compression too. I can't tell on your truck, but it looks like there is a small spacer on the bump-stop to account for that. The spacer lift and that bump stop spacer is actually reducing the amount of travel your shock can use.

If you take out just the shock spacer, that bumpstop spacer might help prevent contact events and it's not doing too much harm except limit your compression.

 

I agree that you’ve got quite a bit of CV angle going on there so it makes sense it’s tearing up your boots and potentially could pop a CV as well. You’ve got a hell of a lot more angle than me on a 3” OME lift. I would suggest removing that spacer and redoing your lift setup. Or at the very least replace the spacer with a smaller 3/1 leveling kit because that one is putting serious angle in your geometry.

 

Thank you all for the great information. I'm all new to this lifted trucks thing and I think I'm going to take the car in at one of the lift shops to see what they will say about what I have on the truck and go from there. I just had OEM CV axles installed on the truck today. Let's see how long they last until I figure things out. Thank you again Tundra fam, really appreciate all the info and help you all have been providing me. Cheers.

 

Honestly if you're not off-roading you don't need more than 2" of a front leveling lift. I'll echo what everyone else has said and say it's probably best to go with a suspension lift. Not a spacer lift.

 

I'm trying to install a diff drop spacers, but my differential has a different setup than any I've seen on YouTube. My diff seems to have a braket holding on the driver side. Anyone know how I should go about putting the diff drop spacer in or will spacers not work for me? Thank you.

 

Did you get your install sorted out? I actually haven’t installed a diff drop and not sure what the process is for that driver side bracket.

 

Yes I did. I took the truck a few weeks ago to Total Off Road and they recommended I install a diff drop with spacers to help with the angle. I ended up buying the 1 inch spacer kit and installed them myself. It took me about 3 hours to do. First time for everything lol. Most of my time was spent dealing with the amount of space I had to put the new bolt and nut on the driver side. That space is really tight and trying to get your hands in there to guide the nut on the bolt was a bit of work. But I finally got it and I was able to get a wrench in there to hold the nut so I can tighten the bolt from the bottom. In regards to my initial question above, I had to loosen the big bolt on the differential bracket that's in the middle a tiny bit to allow the differential to drop a bit more so I can get the spacer in. Then I put everything back the way it was. The kit came with spacers for the engine shield as well. That was tricky as the spacers have to go on top of the engine shield to bring it down. I used a few small pieces of duct tape to hold the spacers in place so they wouldn't fall off the engine shield while I tried to put it on and got the new bolts in place. Hopefully all this work will actually help with reducing the wear and tear on the boots. But only time will tell. I will report back if the boots go again. Thanks again to everyone and the great info on everything.