Re greasing and clean up would be best, but a simple greasing with a
needle thru the boot will buy some time. You need to get it around the
balls and tracks. You will want new boots, anyway, when you do it right!
Al Brase

John Bange wrote:

>>My question is - "Is smooth silence typical from an unweighted handturned
>>blown CV joint?" - or is some other expensive hard to fix thing broken?
>>
>>
>>
>
>The classic "clonking" from the CV joints is the result of a stick-slip
>action under tension, usually caused by damaged bearing surfaces in the CV
>joint due to lubrication failure. You probably wouldn't be able to
>reproduces the same stick-slip just spinning the wheel by hand unless it's
>REALLY bad. Vaguely similar "clonking" can be caused by wheel bearing issues
>or assorted brake gremlins, but those usually show up when you spin the
>wheel by hand also. If you haven't regreased the CV joints in the last
>30Kmiles, you might as well just pull them off and clean the grease off. If
>they're buggered, replace. If not, well, a fresh re-greasing can't hurt 'em.
>
>--
>John Bange
>'90 Vanagon - "Geldsauger"
>
>
>