Replacing inner CV joint boots

I've only had my Quickjacks for a few months now, but they are already almost paying for themselves. So far, I've done some transmission work, bled the brakes, swapped wheels, and replaced brake pads. While all of these jobs are possible to do with a hydraulic jack and jack stands, the Quickjacks make these tasks so much easier and safer.

While replacing the front brake pads on my 2004 Audi allroad the other week, I noticed the inner CV joint boots were torn on both sides. So after setting the car down and going for a road test to try out the new brakes, up she went again on the Quickjacks for axle removal.

I've replaced the outer CV joint boots before on my 2000 Audi S4, but the inner boots are a bit more challenging, as they require removing the axles entirely from the car and disassembling the joints.

I ordered the boot replacement kits from FCP Euro. FCP has much lower prices than ECS Tuning, which had been my go-to source for Audi parts previously. FCP also has an equally good website and order fulfillment.

With the car on the Quickjacks about 2' off of the ground, I propped a floor jack on top of my Rhino Ramps to jack up the suspension to an angle where I could finagle the axle out of the wheel hub without disassembling any of the control arms/suspension upright:

Here is one of the axles with the flange removed; banging the flange off with a rubber mallet was sort of fun:

And here is the inner CV joint exposed once I had cut off the old torn boot:

I acquired a new tool, a 3-arm puller, so that I could remove the CV joint from the axle shaft:

Once the joint was pulled off, the new boot slipped on easily. After that, it was simply a matter of filling the space around the joint in the boot with grease from the repair kit and putting everything back together.

The passenger side presented some complications, as one of the bolts attaching the axle to the transmission stripped when I was trying to remove it. So I had to carefully cut the stripped bolt off with a rotary tool. In the process, I had to cut into the axle flange, and that in turn required sourcing a replacement flange, as well as new axle bolts.

Still, even factoring in the unexpected costs from the additional parts I had to order, I came out far ahead as compared to the alternative of paying a shop to do this work. In the process, I also continued to improve my DIY expertise. I can confidently say now that I can fix axles like a pro, and that's a skill of no small value.