Good morning and Season's Greetings to you all.
Our 3.6 TDV8 has just passed its MOT (phew!) with only 1 minor defect and 2 advisories.
Repair asap (minor defects)
Drive shaft joint cv boot severely deteriorated Nearside Front Inner

And the Advisories
Front pads wearing thin and
Suspension arm pin or bush worn but not resulting in excessive movement Offside Rear Upper

For the CV boot my wife was quoted in the region of £170, she didn't ask about the rest. Are these major jobs? I've done some searches and had a variety of results positive and negative. We're on the Southampton edge of the New Forest if any body knows a decent reasonably priced mechanic or could point me to a step-by-step how-to I'd really appreciate it.
Many thanks

the rear CV boots aren't the hardest to change if you use the stretchy type of boot to replace it , shouldn't be more than an hour to change for a decent mechanic imo , so that price seems a bit steep to me but FF's seem to give some folk an excuse to print their own money

Thanks bembo449, it's the front inner that needs replacing.

Have you ever done an inner drive shaft CV joint gaiter on any car?

Without looking at the workshop manual you will have to;
Jack the car up.
Remove wheel
Seperate swing arm from hub carrier
Remove drive shaft from the hub
Seperate shaft/slide shaft out
put boot on an re-assemble.
Assuming it all goes well its not a really hard job but....
if it doesnt do you have big hammers/drifts etc.

170 may seem high but I reckon it would take a DIY'er doing on the drive 2 hours if no problems.


RAVE and the Workshop manuals all provide the info on how to do the job.
but if you have never done one on any car I would be tempted to pay the 170.

I’ve changed the outer cv joints and it wasn’t fun although you won’t need to remove the outer joint and you can remove the inner one with the whole driveshaft removed. You need the correct socket to remove the hub nut, ideally a new nut, there is a special tool to push and pull the shaft though the hub but I managed without it , you need to be able to split the ball joints without splitting the rubbers which is another special tool ideally , a torque wrench that goes up to over 400 Nm if I recall correctly , new diff seal and I think oil for the diff, the boot of course and ideally the cv retainer clip pliers or old style pincers, think that’s about it. Rave lists another tool to remove the inner cv joint from the diff but you could probably use a couple of levers.
I did a write up somewhere or just follow Rave.
I think £170 is about right if that includes parts and vat. Somebody who has all the tools and a ramp might do it quite quickly but he had to buy the tools, ramp and premises and all the overheads that go with that.