CV Boot leak fix on 4Runner

Noticed a leak on the driver side CV boot. The passenger side had been fixed about a year or so ago under warranty. Luckily, there wasn't any tear or damage in the boot, from what I can tell.  The grease did leak out all over, though.

Here's my fix, but I recommend getting a grease gun w/ a needle attachment for around $20 rather than the way I did it.  I was going cheap and thought it would work (which it did), but wasn't worth the pain. Click on the images to enlarge.

You can get a small sized grease gun like this at any local auto parts store.

I started out with a syringe and needle I got from an old inkjet ink refill kit.

But when I filled the syringe and tried to push out the grease, it was too thick for the grease to go through the needle.  What I ended up doing was taking off the needle and shoving the red tube I got off of a WD40 can into the syringe.  This set up ended up working but pushing the grease through the red tube was painstakingly slow and required some hard pushing. Not exaggerating here, it was REALLY SLOW AND PAINFUL TO THE HAND.  Just pay the $20 and get the grease gun.

 1.) Take a flathead screw driver and undo the metal band that holds the CV boot closed.

2.) Take a pair of snipping shears and cut the metal band.

3.) Shove a toothpick into the CV boot to provide a small gap for the syringe tube to squeeze in. This way, you won't have to keep pulling back on the rubber CV boot.  Slide the red tube next to the gap of the tooth pick.  You may need to angle the tube a bit to get it to go in. I did.  Squeeze the syringe to get the grease it.  You will be cursing at this point.  Repeat until all the grease is put in.

4.) Once the grease is in, clean up the grease that leaked out all over the place.  I put a hose clamp on and angled the end upward to prevent it from loosening.

It's been holding pretty well.  I've driven it for about a week, which included sand dunes at Pismo Beach and it's clean and dry.  Will need to keep an eye on it until the CV boot eventually needs to be replaced.  Here's a photo after a week: