as long as they feel tight you should be fine. there shouldn't be any play in the ball joint. If they are sloppy then they're bad. since the shafts are out you can grab the strut housing and try to move it front to back. if it moves at the joint it's probably bad.

 

Well, my quad is a 95 with close to 4K miles on it and the pads still were within specs. Plus, replacing the pads is not difficult if you need to do it in the future. It's your money though... ;^)

 

Its the rears that wear out fast.

Jim

 

Hey Hoopie.
I just got done doing my shaft. THe only thing funny I ran into was how the heck to change out the front brake pads. After a quick look at my manual I found out the their is a little adjusting screw in the top bore of the caliper that the pad pins ride in. I had to take it out to get the piston to push in enough to get the pads out. It says in the manual to tighten this adjuster until the pads hit the rotors and then back it out 1/2 turn. It uses the same size allen wrench as the hub fluid filler. Also when adding my hub fluid I filled it all the up. rotated the hub many times to work the fluid into the bearings and then added more fluid. after that I turned it to the 3 o'clock position to drain a little out and then put the little magnet screw back in. other than that everything seemed real straight forward. How's yours coming along??

 

one more thing
Make sure you check your outer tie rod ends. I had a bad one. Lot's of slop on one side, the other side is nice and tight. I just grabbed ahold of the tie rod and could move it in and about 1/4" on the bad side.

 

My axles were suppose to come in on Friday but they didnt and they will be here on Monday so it ruined my weekend of working on the quad. I won my auction on ebay for a service manual ($35 with shipping) so now i have one coming in the mail. This should help. It sounds like the the installation of the shafts was strait forward. Thats good. i will keep you updated on this.

 

Man UPS is really slipping. Mine was two days later than it should have been. UPS's fault of course. They used to run like clockwork around here but not anymore.

 

I attempted to put on my new axles and they were the wrong size. They were a 1/2 inch to short. now i have to send them back and wait. they dont come with pins either. did you buy new pins from dealer or use a bolt?

 

It sucks that they were too short. Did the seller screw up and send the wrong ones? Anyway, I was able to reuse the pins since they weren't damaged when I punched them out and they still fit tight when I reused them. You might try calling some auto parts stores to see if they have some that would work. I saw someone suggest using a bolt. As long as there was no free-play in the yolk, clearance problem or chance that the bolt would work its way loose that might be ok.

 

I bought a new pin but you can just re-use your old ones.