Torn/ripped cv boot?

Yes, it's bad to keep driving it.

The CV boot protects the CV joint. It holds oil around the joint, to keep the joint lubricated. Since the boot has a tear in it, the oil will have all fallen out. If you keep driving, the joint will fail eventually (not tomorrow, but maybe next month). Then it will be more like $700 to fix it, plus I think you'd need to pay a towtruck to tow it in.

CV stands for Constant Velocity. Imagine the wheels turning, and the car going around a corner. If the wheels turn at the same rate of speed, but the outside wheel is going farther than the inside wheel, then one wheel would slip. The CV joint somehow slows down the inside wheel so that this doesn't happen. But if it breaks, I'm pretty sure the car will not go at all.

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RE:

Torn/ripped cv boot?

So I went in for an oil change on my 2003 Grand Prix GTP, and they said I had a torn cv boot. They said it would be around $200, and that was about 2 weeks ago. I was wondering, is it bad to continue driving. I don't have the money yet, so I cannot just fix it, but I wanted to know exactly...

The cv is the pivot point and gears connecting the transaxle to the wheels basically. You need to fix that boot asap. If dirt gets in there, it can cause premature bearing failure & then you'll be out a considerable amount of cash to fix that problem. Some places sell a replacement boot that will go over & around it so that you don't have to remove the entire assembly. It's a bit of a messy job because you have to clean out the old grease and then spooge in new grease. I did it myself once on an 89 Escort for around $70. That was back in 91 though. G'luck.

What Is A Cv Boot

Jon's answer is right on. But you may be able to find a cheap stop-gap repair which can keep you going until you've got the cash. There are CV boot covers and sealers available for some cars. Go to a good parts store or look it up in the Whitney catalog. If your car uses grease, not oil in the CV joint, you can repack the boot using the right grease. (Even the wrong grease will be better than letting it go dry.) This is not hard to do.

You can buy a CV boot repair kit at any major autoparts store and it will not cost you $200.00 and you can do it yourself if you have access to a proper jack. There is no disassembly required and the job takes about 15 minutes.

Best that you do it soon before dirt and water get in there and contaminate your CV joint. That will cost big money.

You have four CV boots on your car, two on each half shaft. They are essentiall rubber sleeves that are sort of accordion-like in design and are clamped onto the axles at either end with large hose clamps of a sort. The boots serve to keep grease (not oil) in and dirt out of the caged bearings at these knuckles on the axles.

Now normally replacing a boot involves removing the half shaft on the affected side which also involves removing the disk brake rotor and caliper and releasing a fairly substantial hub nut on the end of the axle and so there is a fair amount of labor involved. The boot itself is probably no more than $20 or so.

However, if you are short on money, you can get what is called a split boot installed to replace the torn solid boot. Because this split boot has a seam down the length of it that it esentially joined by staples, it does not require the half shaft to be removed to allow it tobe slipped onto the end of the shaft. Instead you can cut away the old boot and install the split boot in its place, saving a great deal of labor cost.

As to running the car with a bad boot, yes it will in fairly short order allow the grease to escape the joint, and dirt to get in , and cause the internal bearings to fail, which will coniderably increase the cost of the repair, as you will end up adding the cost of a new half shaft or about another $150. Still, the labor will remain about the same, as it is as easy to replace the entire half shaft as it is to remove the existing one, fix the boot, and reinstall.

Get Joint Pain Relief Codes!

if you continue to drive it dirt will get in to the joint and cause it to go bad a lot faster,if you repair it right now they might be able to save the joint and the axle you have in it,driving it though will cause it to loose all of its grease and that will destroy it,you don't have long to decide though ,time will get it,and then you,ll have to replace it,good luck.

Oh NO!!! Don't drive it like that.

Fix it now while it is still cheap to fix. Later it will be MUCH more expensive. But go to a real mechanic (not the quicky lube idiots).

Good Luck...