Re-installing left front suspension, and cannot get the bottom 2 bolts back into strut. the wheel is pointed totally wrong and I cannot even line up the 2 bolts. It looks like the boot on the drive shaft is stretched. What is it that is preventing me from being able to line up the strut with the rest of the linkage?

Thanks

 

spin the brake rotor so you can turn the axle and push and try to get the cv to line up and it will slide back in

 

You gotta push the caliper up and towards the back of the car if I remember correctly. Also you were supposed to have something supporting the axle while the supsension was out so that the boots weren't flexed too much.

 

That happened to me. Jack up the contorl arm, so it's near parallel to the ground. Then work the brake rotor back and forth till the axle pops back in.

 

Do you have the whole front end jacked up? Remember when jacking up one side, the sway bar tries to pull the opposite side back up so that the strut bolts won't line up.

 

Ahh the famous outter joint falling apart. Let me guess, aftermarket axel as well right? You will have to remove the large band around the axel and pull the boot away to expose the joint. It's full of grease so be prepaired to get messy. Gloves are your friends. Once you've got the boot off and pulled back you'll see the spline shaft thats fallen out. Jack up the control arm to make the alignment easier, then twist the CV joint to line up the spline shaft and put it back into the outter part of the axel. You can purchase a new band to tie the boot back up nice and tight or just reuse the old one for now. There is a special tool to tie up the bands but if your creative you can get them fairly tight with basic tools.

Good luck with this one, it's a messy job but fairly easy.

 

Thanks guys for the help. It was actually help for me...Dennis was helping me install. What I did was jack up the lower control arm, shake around the shaft and I was able to pop it back in. Now the left rear lower bolt for the strut is bascially screwed. Nissan put a bracket around the nut to keep it from spinning, but of course it is still spinning. I am going to take the car to a shop tommorow to have them weld the nut right onto the rest of the bracket.

 

This is what it looked like when the drive shaft slipped out.