Hi, driving in circles in one method.
here's another CV joint check.
Get under the rear of the van ....grab each axle and first ....slide it
back and forth.
It must slide back and forth about a high inch or a bit more, and smoothly.

next, jerk them up an down ...listening for dry looseness and wear.
Typically CV joints get dry, like they don't have enough grease in them
..the balls wear badly into the grooves they slide in ...
and that will manifest itself as dry slippiness in this
jerk-them-up-and-down test , and while driving too.

if you don't know the history of your CV joints , you really don't know
what ya got there until you take them out and work on them.  I would
never start a long trip without having a record of when the CV joints
were last inspected and greased thoroughly.
  there is a cheater trick of injecting grease into them under the boot
of course.
In my opinion the inner wear more due to being by the transmission heat.

Beware of cheap CV joints, even cheap CV joint screws.
I had one recently......it was so cheap and so from you-know-where that
the hex allen hole in the end of the CV joints screws was not even in
the center of the screw head, it was that cheaply made !!    The allen
tool in that hole striped right out of course.   That cheap stuff should
be illegal. Yeah..a huge import tariff on ultra-cheap goods.

On 7/2/2012 10:41 AM, Jeff Lincoln wrote:
> Thanks John! I'll do this tonight.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Thanks,
>
> Jeff
> '85 GL (Gertie)
> '78 Bus (Melissa) Patty's Bus
>