My son and I replaced the RH or pax side CV axle on our 2.5 TL yesterday. It wasn't a terrible job, but challenging.

We followed the manual instructions, however we had some problems releasing the lower ball joint. My scissors-type ball joint separator tool (Ball Joint Separator Tool ) was damaged (hinge shaft bent due to overload) because the stud could not be pushed loose from the knuckle. We were finally able to release by prying between knuckle and lower arm while hammering the knuckle near the ball joint stud. The ball joint separator tool is made from relatively soft steel and a better quality tool would have worked. It worked fine for my Accord ball joints but failed on the TL lower ball joint which is a bit heavier.

Removing the RH side axle from the intermediate shaft end is challlenging. The separation between the intermediate axle bearing/seal housing and the axle end is large enough to make prying difficult. The intermediate shaft bearing/seal housing is aluminum and can be damaged easily, so prying is dangerous. You're supposed to "tap out w/ a plastic hammer" per manual. However the snap ring retaining the female axle end to the intermediate shaft male end didn't release easily. We had to rig a pry bar before the axle finally released, and then required some light blows w/ steel hammer to get the axle to back out. If you damage the housing, you'll need to pull the intermediate shaft also. A slide hammer w/ a fork to go behind the axle end may be useful to separate the joint. I did not have this tool.

We installed a used CV axle due to my poor experiences w/ remanufactured CV axles. The salvage yard gave us the axle w/ the intermediate shaft attached. We found out why when we tried to separate the outer axle from intermediate axle (same joint as described above). This one absolutely refused to budge. We had to totally destroy the attached bearing/seal aluminum housing and drive the axle shaft off w/ a sledge hammer driving a bar against the intermediate axle end. The snap ring had fouled, essentially locking the two parts together. Fortunately, the damage was minor to the CV axle end and we were able to finish the job.

Axle seems to be working fine so far.

Regards

 

Couple comments:

1. If you do a search of my posts, you will see that about a year ago, I had problems with an axle on its way in, and it got stuck. Ended up making a custom, long (3 ' long) punch to drive the axle out of the differential. remember, in the diff, there is a cross in the middle.

What I found is that when you drive the axle out of the housing (I had no problem doing this) it did not take much force with the deadblow hammer. A few small taps to allow the clip to center itself, and compress - and then it sort of popped out.

Brute force is NOT what you want to use.

2. Talking about brute force - I'll move onto the ball joint separator. I have found that the knockoffs are worthless. I have a full set of OPC that includes #6927 (I think) that I paid about $110 for. Priceless, and worth the bucks.

What you do is put the tool in place, use a wrench to compress it on the ball joint until there is a good bit of force.

Then you take two ball pein hammers on either side of the joint and it will release the ball joint. I have been successful with just one, but sometimes you need two - opposite each other.

If you get to a point where the compression force is high and the joint does not pop out on itself, you need to stop and do the above. Further force will not release the joint - it will only fracture the tool at the pivot point.

3. When putting the new axle in, I recommend removing the snapring (carefully without expanding it permanently) and make sure it goes in freely without the snapring.

Trust me on this - I had one (see above) that did not, and caused me significant grief.

Then put the ring back on careflully...

 

If I had problems removing a shaft, it may be easier to drain the differential of fluid and remove the axle and intermediate shaft as a unit to allow separation outside the car. However, as in our case it's not easy. The fork tool for a slap hammer looks to be useful for separating the joint.

Good advice on the snap ring. On one Accord axle, I installed a new snap ring and could not get the shaft to "snap-in". I finally removed new snap ring and went w/ old snap ring and it snapped in. Tolerances must be very critical.

regards