Just thought I would say hi - I have been snooping here since I got my Legacy in October, and did my first bit of involved work yesterday with help dredged up with the search feature.
Did the passenger side driveaxle ($60 from Autozone!) as it was spewing grease onto the exhaust - not nice.
I decided to follow the Haynes approach and pop the ball joint out - which on a 10 year old California car was really easy - hardly any corrosion.
The axle came off the half shaft really easily after I'd tapped the pin out ( a bit hard to swing a hammer in there though - maybe I would take the air intake snorkel off next time. Info on the board helped me out with knowing that you can only knock the pin out of one end! I noticed by looking at the replacement axle that the hole is counter sunk on the thicker end - that helps to ID it.
Getting the axle out of the hub was non trivial, and took a bit of hammering - which is probably not too nice to the wheelbearings. Similarly getting it back in required some gentle love taps from the hammer. I could tell from the markings in the joint housing that this method had been used before on this axle
. Next time I am definately going to try and get a puller tool so I don't need to get heavy handed with it.The axle nut took a bit of freeing up - and I cheated and had a buddy with an airgun loosen it up after I'd done my best to unstake it.
Anyway its done now - thought I'd share the experience, and thank the board for the great info provided
.Dave
