Am I about to be screwed?

As I said before, I have a cracked right front CV boot on my 05 Taco. Today I stopped by a "Big 10 tires" to get a price quote on replacing the CV Boot alone (Which I have priced on the internet for $25-$35). The clown behind the counter tells me "Oh you don't hear about doing that much anymore, usually you just replace the entire Axel which will run you about $250.00 in parts alone". I just said ok and left. Was he trying to hook me up and make a quick $400 (after labor) or is he correct? BTW, I've already had my mod guy look at it, he says the axel is fine and not much grease was lost, he sees no addational damage and thinks all I need is the CV boot replaced.

 

Yeah, he's screwin ya!

Here, you can actually do this yourself. FYI - this is a 1st generation writeup.
http://www.keystonekrawlers.com/Mods/Toyota/cvboot/CVBoot_replacement.htm

 

You can buy a "Speedy Boot" repair kit from Autozone/O'reilys/PepBoys. This is only if you are replacing the boot itself.....I have used them on my older Toyota and it worked fine. You don't have to take the whole CV out to do this job and it can be done in 30 mins. It will get a little messy and you need to have a little bit of room. Of course the best option is to just fix the boot. The "Speedy Boot" is a temporary fix, I wouldn't suggest wheeling if you go this route. Good luck.

 

A lot of people don't catch broken CV boots until they've lost most of the grease and are messed up and are making noise. Since he didn't look at it I'm guessing he was just airing on the side of caution.

The shop I used to work at had a machine that could stretch a new boot on...but you're still looking at labor to take it off put the boot on and put it on again.