How likely did I mess this up?
Hello, posting on a throwaway cause im an idiot.
2023 Toyota 4runner, 26000 miles
Anyway a friend of mine asked me to do some brakes on his car. I was doing them and ran into a caliper bolt that was really stuck. Wouldn't budge with my breaker bar. I decided to heat it up and spray it with some penetrating oil and alternate the two until I could move it, which eventually worked. One problem though, I burned a hole in a cv boot in the process, I was trying so hard to keep the heat off of anything but the bolt but I guess the radiant heat just got to it.
Anyway, im feeling fucked at this point but I have replaced CV shafts before so I go ahead and buy an OEM cv and get to work. As I was inserting the new cv into the wheel hub the garter spring popped off the seal. At that point I carefully ran the garter spring around the lip while the shaft was in the hub, after ensuring the spring was in place I used the axle nut to pull the shaft through the hub. I didn't grease the back of the seal with any extra grease that wasnt already in the bearing and im not positive the spring stayed in place.
I get everything torqued down, axle nut staked, brakes bled (I had to open a bleeder to compress one caliper) and I test drive the car (2023 4runner). Test drive goes great, I bed the brakes and do some hard jerky turns, and some slow turns at full lock.
I get the car back to the house and inspect for leaks, I dont see any grease coming from the wheel hub or differential and I feel good about it.
As the days go by I cant help but feel like I didn't get that garter spring to set in place right. Ive followed up and inspected the car after about 50 miles of driving and there are still no signs of leaks and the car is still driving well with no bad noises.
Is there still a potential this seal could have been damaged at this point? Ive told my friend to keep an eye on it and if it starts to leak he should bring it to a shop to have the seal redone as I figure that would sting a little less than having a shop do a whole cv shaft and we could split it.
What do you all think?
Posted May 1, 2026, 3:39 AM UTC