Hi. You are asking a good question. When working in the dealership, I always preferred to refresh a Honda CV shaft with a new oem Honda boot, as a used Honda part is far superior to an aftermarket part 🤓 . Parts kept them readily available most of the time for about $30. Aftermarket boots suck to work with and never fit perfectly. The exceptions would be if the boot had been torn for some time and the joint lost it's grease. At that point, you have dirt in the joint and it's compromised. Sure, you can take it apart and clean it, but I preferred to replace with an aftermarket half shaft.

Years ago, getting reman cv axles from any parts house was sketchy. Get a cheaper axle so you can replace it 3 times to get a good one was pretty frustrating sometimes. Same went for starters and alternators. But in recent years, most of the parts stores sell new construction axles, as well as starters and alternators.

If the boot has been open for a while and has gunk inside the boot, just replace it with a lifetime warranty aftermarket axle. And if you don't like playing with taking CV axles apart (quite messy), do the same, and save yourself the work, mess, and headache.

Good luck 🤓

 

Update: sourced a new boot from rock auto and replaced it. Factory manual suggests keeping track of each of the bearings locations and the spider’s orientation so I did as well. It came with 2 big clamps (one oetiker style and one of the “low profile” band style) but only a single smaller clamp (oetiker style) that was a bit large. Used the oetiker big clamp but had to make sure the ear on it was flattened out to avoid hitting the transmission. A pretty straightforward job and not too big of a mess.