I still use OEM axle hardware, and I mean the stuff that came on the van.
It's better than anything you can buy these days, plus it's free to me,
plus it has never let me down after 400K miles of use. I did replace it
once with new stuff, which failed, so I went back to the old and it's still
on there.

Jim

On Mon, Jul 24, 2023 at 3:05 PM Eric Caron <ericcaron96@comcast.net> wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> I try to avoid summer van work and enjoy the van as much as possible.  I
> can do bigger projects in the winter in the garage.
>
> But, today I successfully removed the rear axle on the 85 Auto and once
> the parts from T3 arrive I’ll rebuild and put back on the van.  I don’t
> mind this job as I’ve done it so many times.  I do hope the new CV boots
> turn out to be good ones so I can do this a bit less often.
>
> The support pieces like the bolts, washers, and grease also become
> expensive.
>
> My understanding is I’m not supposed to reuse the bolts.  But that is sad
> as they are so new often less than a year old.
>
> The other side is not ripped yet so I’ll leave it.  I think the other side
> is Rockford boots as they feel stiff.  The Rockfords on the other side gave
> out a long time ago.
>
> The boots on my 84 that gave out were Lobro but to be fair I don’t know
> how long they were on the van.  Still the transmission was replaced in 2021
> so I would think the boots were looking good at that point.
>
>
> So what projects are you folks doing?  I’m looking forward to continuing
> to build my van preparedness.
>
> Eric Caron
>