Stand at the exit from any supermarket parking area, and you can pick out the older front-wheel drive cars ­ by ear! The click-click of worn constant velocity (CV) joints is becoming as typical of supermarket shopping as the rattle of trolley wheels on the tarmac. This situation is tailor-made for the many CV repair shops that have sprung up everywhere. As is usual in the motor trade, the bad shops are often as visible as the good ones. This means that if you're shopping around for replacement CV joints, you will have to do some research to find out which workshop you can safely entrust your car to.

The life of your CV joints can be prolonged if you inspect them at least every 10 000 km. The correct way to do this is to jack up and support the front of the car on stands, then remove both wheels so that you can inspect the CV-joint boots. Turn the steering wheel onto full lock in each direction, in turn, and carefully examine the boots for cracks or tears, squeezing them to open up the folds.

Rotate the shafts slowly so that you can see all the way around. Also, check the security and condition of the retaining clips, and don't forget to inspect the inner boots as well. The condition of the CV-joints can be checked by holding the driveshaft and trying to rotate the wheel to check the outer joint free-play, and holding the inner joint and trying to rotate the driveshaft to check the inner joint free-play. If either the splines or the CV-joint are worn, or the driveshaft retaining nut is loose, it will show up as movement in the above test. Worn joints should always be replaced with new units.

We don't know of any motor manufacturer that recommends the use of reconditioned CV joints. This makes sound common sense, because the reconditioned units seldom last as long as the new ones, and the chance of inferior reconditioning techniques is so high that you could easily end up with joints that last only a few months.