Hi NAM,

My 05 MCS seems to have a leak of some sort and was hoping you can help me identify possibilities and what steps I can take to diagnose/fix. I've attached a picture of what I found when I was going to replace brakes. There's brownish odorless thick goop in the passenger wheel well. I don't see anything leaking continuously, and my garage floor is clean. Could this be from the steering rack boot? oil leak?

 

Update. Axle shaft CV Boot is torn. Am I safe to track the car like this? Or better to cancel my event until I get this sorted out? Any tips on replacing the boot? Can I use the universal split boots? Or bad idea? Axle only has 50k miles, should l replace it too? I'd rather not if not needed. thanks

 

If you are replacing the axle anyway, I say drive until you replace it? I have driven with ripped axle boots for thousands of miles in previous cars. Shouldn't hurt anything, but will make a real mess, which you are gonna deal with in its current state anyway!

 

Thanks for the response. I love your idea and I don't care about the mess anyway as it is mostly driven on the track and not car shows. My only concern is, will it be safe to do so? I understand a lot of things can happen any where and any component can fail anytime. But will driving on the track with a torn cv boot pose any added dangers? For example, driving on bad shocks, or bad brakes or bad tires is dangerous. Is a torn boot more just a nuisance than unsafe?

 

the boot is there to keep dirt out and grease in- the axle won’t operate any differently than it always has, until the point that it gets dirt and grit inside and destroys the joint. Even then it will click pretty loudly before it fails. I wouldn’t do it indefinitely, but you could drive 3000 miles without issue.

 

Hey Benjamin, thanks for clarifying that. This buys me some time and some peace of mind. I'll just plan on upgrading both axles in the future, but I'll run them as is right now.