At 280,000 miles, its time for new CV joints, boots and axles. Gotta special order the parts, my local shop says. As well, is there some special tool required for this job - some sort of crimping tool or some such thing?

Since you have not provided year and model info, this is only a guess. On 123's and 126's there really are no special tools required. There is a bolt at the wheel end that needs to be removed and it is helpful to take the caliper off of its mount and hang it up somewhere under the fender. The real deal is to be able to move the rear end up and down relative to the body, as this facilitates removal and replacement of the new shaft. Finally there is a circlip on the end of the shaft that resides inside the rear end, which must be removed to get the old shafts out. This can be a bear sometimes. Also do not loose the spacers that are right by the circlips. They are needed on the new ones!

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1961 190Db retired
1968 220D/8 325,000
1983 300D 164,150

Thanks.
Dumb of me not to add model & year - my car is a 1983 300D sedan.

As you can see from my sig, that is the same car that I have. I did the right half shaft just about a year ago, using a nearly new one from one of my parts cars. Went kind of slowly, as I was new at this task. However once the job was done, I headed off to Colorado the next morning. Seems to be still working fine.

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1961 190Db retired
1968 220D/8 325,000
1983 300D 164,150

The crimping tool is used only if your were going to rebuild the homokinetic CV joint. Nobody ever does this, choosing (wisely) instead to replace the entire axle with a rebuilt unit.

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Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.

So then, no special tools are needed to replace the whole axle assembly, by the sounds of it?
I will be replacing both sides.

Aside from the usual assortment of sockets and stuff, you'll need a large hex key, 14mm I think, (allen wrench) to remove the fill and drain plugs in the differential and a good pick tool to remove the retaining clips on the inner ends of the axles.

I'm not sure what your level of skill is so I will say that this is not a hard job to do but, a lot of the steps you need to take in order to remove and install the axles are not intuitive...it's easy to get into the mode of thinking that you need to beat on something to get it to fit. But, other than the fill and drain plugs (which get pretty tight), nothing should need to be beaten on with a hammer. You will get to a point where you think you need to tap the axle to get it to clear but at that point, all that's necessary is to move the differential up (or down) to get the clearance.

If I were you, I would do an EXTENSIVE search of this forum on the following words: axle, axle change, CV joint, clip, differential, half shaft. Carefully study what you find, come back and ask questions.

Here are a couple of links to get you started:
Axle stuff

More axle stuff

Good luck.

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Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.

Mr. R Leo said it very well. Not a hard job. Its a rather messy job, meaning you will have oil and grease up to your elbows. Its physically a bit much laying under the car and such. Plenty on this subject in the archives. You'll need to determine how much you want to spend on axles.......The expensive factory ones , the cheap rebuilts (CarQuest etal) or some good rebooted ones from CVJ. Factory are about $650 each, CarQuest about $100 each and CVJ about $145 each.

The only other suggestion I'd make is that you don't need to buy the factory bolt that pulls the axle into the wheel hub. That bolt is about $6 to $8 each from the factory and its a POS. The next time I do this, I'll go down to my local "bolt room" and buy a Grade 10.9 (metric). Much better bolt. The FSM recommends that you replace that bolt when you replace the axle. Of course they do, that bolt is such a POS in the first place, its not for reuse . Rant over.

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84 300DT Puke Yellow. Totalled after 438,000
84 300DT Orient Red. 169,000 (actual mileage may vary)
2002 Explorer EB (wife's)