I don't know any particular brands of CV boots, but I've seen there are many different boots. I have never seen any indication of who the boot mfg'er was.
From some notes I had written several years ago, there used to be spiral CV boots available from a company called GWR. They seem to have gone out of business though. I don't know anything about whether those spiral boots would even work, although their claim was to avoid splitting boots while at high angles.
Both the inner and outer CV boots require disassembly of the inner tulip joint (and inner boot) in order to replace either of the boots. No problem for you since it's your inner boot that's leaking.
I'd recommend adding a front diff drop kit (1 inch or less) to slightly improve the CV angles. 4Crawler sells a kit, as do several other places. I made my own out of $12 of grade 8 parts from a hardware store.
I don't understand what you're saying regarding the round inner shape versus the clover leaf shape. But I'll mention a few differences I've learned about the shape of the inner CV joint between Tundras, Tacomas, and 4Runners.
The Tundra uses a different type of inner CV joint that is round on the outside, but the axle is longer than in Tacomas and 4Runners, so you can't directly use that axle or boot.
If you buy an aftermarket CV boot for the Tacoma/4Runner inner tripod/tulip joint, the boot should have the 3 sides or "facets" around the joint included in the molding for the boot. I did see one aftermarket 4Runner axle once that came new from the axle mfg'er with the wrong size inner CV boot. In that case, you could move the inner joint back and forth by hand and hear air passing through it. It should be air tight. So apparently it's easy even for the mfg'er to make a mistake since there are multiple sizes of inner boots out there.
I've heard of someone doing a custom modification on an inner boot where they cut off those facets from the torn boot and re-used them along with an inner boot that had no facets molded in. They had to made the metal straps very tight to make sure it's air-tight. Definitely not the best solution, but it might work.
Another thing to be aware of with boots is that even though Tacoma and 4Runner axle assemblies as a whole are interchangeable between Tacomas and 4Runners, the OEM components were manufactured by different companies (different continents) and everything about the inner CV's are mechanically very different sizes with different roller bearings inside. Many car parts stores sell the Tacoma/4Runner axles interchangeably, which is typically OK. There's only a couple times where you can run into a snag, such as changing the CV boots or changing only part of the axle such as when trying to get manual hubs. Depending on where your axle came from, you may or may not have an OEM 4Runner axle on your 4Runner (typically not a problem). Just be aware of it and expect it to not be straightforward on the first try.
[edit]: The inner joint on the 4Runner uses larger rollers. The Tacoma's are smaller. It would seem the 4Runner's would be slightly stronger there, but that's never where they break for either axle, so it doesn't really matter.
Last edited by Jeff the marmot; 07/19/09 06:39 AM.
