The fuel gauge was no longer accurate. This is a known issue with vehicles some yahoo ran nasty biodiesel through. Removed it, dismantled it, cleaned it, re-soldered a wire that popped off, reassembled, reinstalled. Huzzah. Should work fine now. I didn’t take pictures of it cleaned due to not wanting my camera to be covered in diesel. 😛
Don’t reboot the CV joint. Not worth the time and trouble of doing it right. Replace the thing and have done with it. If you have a parts cleaner filled with a 50/50 diesel/mineral spirits mix and you love spraying solvent all over the place, knock yourself out.
Last of the significant orders are in. Both half axles are off the car, getting cleaned up (CV grease does *not* want to clean off). Took the destroyed rear bumper off the car, got the replacement cleaned up. For sake of ‘better now than later’, I am going to repaint the inside for protection against corrosion. Where the steel and aluminum touch on the replacement bumper is … best painted. And probably greased up for good measure. Either way, things progress.