Another vote here for CVJ. I think I was one of the earlier users on the forum to try them out. I called the owner, can't remember his name. He doesn't perform any rewelding or "rebuilding" of the joint. They sort and find the used axles that meet particular clearance standards, clean them up, reboot them and add in the factory recommended oil.
I had them in my first 300D and when I totaled that car, I pulled them out and saved them. I put them in my replacement 300D around last April. Been fine ever since.
Replacing the axles is not technically that hard of a job. Its physically hard-on-your-body doing this in your garage, on the floor, while laying on your back. Its somewhat messy. Its not a fast job. It took me 6 hours to R&R the my first axle, but I don't work that fast (that included a shower before I went to bed
). The second time was to replace the other side, because I was too naive to replace both at the same time.
The third time was to R&R in my current car and I replaced both at the same time. When my wrecked car was on a professional lift, I had both axles removed within 20 minutes. The lift helps a lot.
There is enough evidence on this forum that should tell you which "rebuilt/rebooted axle" vendors product last. I don't believe I've heard of one failed CVJ axle yet. I heard plenty of autozone, Kragan, and MannyMoe failed axle stories to last a lifetime. As Jeremy mentioned, including shipping the rebuilts to you and shipping the cores back, its about $350.
If you roll the dice, buy some hack job axles for $200 a set and they fail, you have to perform the job again. At $20 to $25 an hour (and I hope you value your time at least at that rate), the math doesn't work for the cheap axles, the failure rate is just too high. Not to mention that while you are waiting for your CVJ axles to arrive, because you were too cheap to buy them in the first place, now you are renting a car.
CVJ axles, factory oil cooler lines, factory window seals, new R4 A/C compressor and Lemforder front end parts. These are the items of which you should not cut corners.