Thanks john. I've done dozens of these and i'm sick of them. We were not allowed to replace anything but the boot if under warrenty even if the ball and cage was damaged we had to repair it. I can replace this axil and have the car back on the ground before the old boot and cage are even removed. It takes longer to jack up the car, set up the stands, and remove the tire than it does to replace the axil. Axils are cheap. I'll just replace it and i know i have a new one and under warrenty. I know how i'm going to fix it i just thought someone else had ideas before i replace it and only when i'm in the mood. I don't normally fix anything. I just replace it with new. Except a motor or transmission, sometimes. Thanks for the input. The old lady has friday,saturday,and sunday off so it might get replaced this weekend. If she is in one of her moods i might just take extra time and put in a boot kit. If your interested i'll let you know how the repair turns out.

Look at a repair manual for your car. A general approach, not necessarily applicable for all models: 1. Reove the seat. Its fastneing method varies with the car. On some, the seat is held down by clip-in arrangement. You depress/push the seat in a certain direction to unclip it and then lift out. 2. Look inside the trunk to try to discover how the seat back is held in and proceed from there. 3. I should have mentioned this first. Look inside the trunk at the construction behind the seat back. you may find a formed sheet metal bracing that spans the area behind the seat and this will defeat your project, because after the seat back is removed, that bracing will still be there and is part of the body work. 4. Your best bet would be to get a model that has fold-down rear seats. The work is already done for you. Just fold down the seats to increase the rear cargo space. This feature is more likely to be found on SUVs: For example, a Jeep Cherokee or a Honda CR-V. * * * * * * * * * * * If you intend to haul stuff on a regular basis, why not get a small pickup or a SUV in the first place?

Thank-you for the compliment. The thing is I'm not alone out here, and I know a lot of guys that are even better techs than I am. Let's say that's one of the reasons that when I see sham stories like Danielle's on TV I simply don't roll over and let her say what she wants without challenging her. " what do you think of buying a new car and when the warranty is about to expire trade it in" People that do that enable the dealers to build the castles they sell the cars out of. One of my customers had a stroke about seven years ago, and has been disabled since then. He had been to the shop only hours before and I had done a pre purchase used car check for him, and at the same time I was fixing a battery cable on his Celebrity to cure a no-start. Of course it turned out that they needed the Celebrity to run, and suddenly they were not in a position to buy another car. Time passed, and while DV is still no longer working, the kids have made it through college and they have moved to a smaller house and are getting by quite nicely. About three years ago the Oldsmobile Aurora that was still a relatively new car for them when DV had his stroke lost the head gaskets. It's a 3.5l DOHC aluminum block known as the mini Northstar, so that means you drop the engine and tranny as an assembly out of the bottom. Every headbolt pulls the threads out with it, and that means I had to buy a special tool kit which rebores those bolt holes, and installs threaded inserts into which the headbolts thread back into. Combine that with some other service issues that were due to be performed and the total bill was close to $3700. This car was worth nothing in a trade since it was over 130K miles. I gave them their options, anmd let them decide what they wanted to do. If you "assume" payments of around $400.00 a month for a new car, then at ten months to a year they are essentially at the break even point. Except for the little detail of depreciation of the new car the moment you drive it off the lot. Every month past that is a bonus. There is always some risk in any decision. Have an accident with this, and it's gone and you don't see your money for the repairs back. Buy the new car, and while it's not likely that you get a bad one it is possible, and with your current car at least you do know what you have. Today she still makes the "car payment" to a savings account exactly as I outlined earlier. She of course since she was doing that had the cash available to go ahead and decide to fix the Oldsmobile. If the transmission failed on it today, she could very comfortably choose to fix it or go ahead and buy a new one with cash. When she hit 190K miles, she was in for basic services and asked me how much further will this car go? She still loves the car. My answer was basically what I said earlier, it can keep going till the day she decides she does not want to go further with it, or until I tell her it's time. Frankly, I don't think it's any time soon. At least not in the next five years anyway.....

Thanks for your kind responses. Thanks to you I rechecked the string I bought. It's nylon and reads extra strength. That was a happy surprise. I'm old, old and often need two pair of glasses to examine things. I've studied a fellow on Youtube (hand sewing with big and little doc) for doing the repair and likely will follow his lead. Can't do it for few days. I need to do my taxes. Thank goodness for Taxcut software. By the way, has Houzz taken away our ability to either edit or spell check our posts? Thanks again. Gene