Front axle replacement

I’ve been driving around with a torn boot on my passenger-side front axle for a long time. When I got the 4Runner inspected last year (an annual requirement from the state of Pennsylvania) I was told to take care of it.

Front axle boot tears are common on lifted 4Runners as the angle of the CV joint is increased, which leads to the ribs of the boots rubbing together causing friction. Once the boots are torn, they spray out axle grease at each revolution and get filled up with dirt and water when off-roading. Eventually, since there is no more grease and a lot more debris, the CV joint will fail and turn your outing into a very bad day.

I’ve had MaryAnn for over 20 years now and have had to replace the font axles before. I always had this done at the dealer as I didn’t really know how easy of a job it was. Somewhere along the way, both axles were swapped out with less inferior after-market ones.

As previously mentioned, the job was pretty easy given the amount of online resources available. One of the YouTubers I subscribe to is Timmy The Toolman, who has a countless number of how-to videos on all things 3rdGen. Timmy has a video that walks you through the axle replacement process in great detail.

I did run into a couple of snafus during the process. First off, the axle nuts on the old axles where not genuine Toyota and not standard size. The standard 3rdGen axle nut is 35mm. These nuts were 41mm. This caused a week or so delay in the project as I needed to wait for a shipment from Amazon to arrive.

The second issue I ran into was the fill and drain plugs on the front differential. These things must have been put on with an impact driver! I really struggled to get them off. I wanted to be careful as if I stripped them, then I was really going to be hosed. I had to use a breaker bar on both plugs and did so without stripping them (whew!).

You can see a summary of the job (which basically is everything I just mentioned above, but you get to hear my lovely voice) in the video below.