Question: grease amount for front outer CV joint

[Theiceman]

It looks like in that first pic someone was trying to bang out the axle without removing the circlip first. i've seen it before a couple of times ... they put the edge of the cv joint on something and try to drive the axle out . the circlip is covered in grease so they dont see it. A little surprised to see a dealer do that , that is usually done by the home mechanic with no experience.

The damaged area i highly doubt was damaged by a stone, CV'S use a hardened or " annealed" surface , for the balls to ride in. When they wear they begin to look " polished" as the annealed surface starts to wear , you can even see it in the neighboring groove in the pic, this fine metal being polished off has nowhere to go and accelerates the wear. eventually you wear through the hardened surface and into the casting and its game over.

when i repack CVs if i see the surface has become polished, if it has i just replace the CV joint.

here is the one out of My Porsche to give you a better look.


The ones on my Audi have gone over 200K km before needing replacement so yes that seems early to have it go bad. I have theories as to why this one went bad so quickly but at the end of the day you need a new one ..

me personally, i don't believe in "replacement" axles . I will just put an OE joint in , but that is personal choice.