Now that's what I'd like to see in a "Glad Wrap" or "Saran Wrap"
commercial.....   :)

On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 3:05 PM, Max Wellhouse <dimwittedmoose@cfu.net>wrote:

> Our Subie Outback had a front inner boot blow and not having the cash
> for a new axle jsut yet, I got creative for a "keep the rest of the
> grease in there until I can fix it" shade tree repair.  Most Walmarts
> and Harbor Freights have these small rolls of shrink wrap for
> shipping stuff and such and they come with like a white plastic
> handle for the wrapping part.  The roll is maybe 7-8" in width.  In
> additon to that, I used part of a roll of 3M 33+ electrical tape and
> a pair of semi sharp scissors or maybe a razor type knife might work too.
>
> The inner boot on the Subie(and Syncro for that matter) is pretty
> congested in there making the rolling of the shrink wrap around the
> old boot somewhat difficult, so I jacked up the vehicle and had y
> wife manually spin the right front tire while I fed the shrink wrap
> through the smallest of gaps above the exhaust.  I went back ands
> forth over the entire area from axle to CV joint buit didn't put a
> lot of pressure  nthe stretch wrap.  Snug, but not way tight.  I made
> sure I was rolling the wrap so the end flap was pointing to the rear
> for roation's sake, and then had her rotate slowly and I covered it
> more or less with the electrical tape too.
>
> My thinking was that the width and elasticity of the shrink wrap in
> combo with the ability of the electrical tape to stick to clean
> shrink wrap, maight jus t make a decent temporary boot.  We've driven
> it for a few days with positive results so far.  I didn't try to heat
> shrink the wrap over the old boot, but that may make a slightly
> cleaner temporary fix. I would feel lucky to have access to a heat
> gun during a roadside repair.
>
> Anybody ever tried this fix???  I'm thinking the inboard CV's on the
> Vanagon could benefit from this, but how you'd feed that shrink wrap
> inside the hub housings, good luck with that.
>
> YMMV
>
> Max
>