boy, im glad I took care of this. There turned out to be more wrong than I expected, and from the fact that the only thing noticeable was a leak, otherwise the car drove fine.
So this was my leaking issue-
driver side axle seal-
passenger side axle seal-
and as a bonus, this wrecked boot- (is there a heat shield on the later mk2s? im wondering if the proximity to the exhaust is what cooked this boot prematurely, was extremely hard and tough, and I remember it being pliable as recently as last year)
Removed the axles, and on the driver side axle, I found almost no lubrication on the outer CV joint-
you can see some of the heat marks here, the whole thing was riddled with heat marks-
On the passenger side inner CV, I found that the bearing race was broken!-
What I ended up doing is taking the good inner CV joint from the original driver side axle, moving it to the inner side of a spare passenger axle that had a bad inner CV joint, and re booting and greasing all 4 CV joints. Im glad I had a few spares, its turned out that the heat marks were common to a couple of them.
next I moved to the seals, there was an excellent thread over on the vortex that linked to a DIY article that was useful. I popped out the center cover with a punch through the middle exposing the snap ring-
pulled out the snap ring and the whole stub pops out on a spring-
the trashed seal, looked like this on both sides-
removed and cleaned for new seal-
The worst part of the job was this brass thrust washer/ring that is behind the spring cup on the inside. I had read that they are frequently broken into bits, but as long as still fitted where they are supposed to go, will work fine. The driver side was 3 pieces, passenger as 5. The most time spent was trying to get these dam things to stay in place without falling off the shaft and mucking things up.
once those were back in place and the seals installed, recompressing the spring to fit the snap ring is a bit of a chore. On the DIYs I read, they were talking about using clamps, and other items, but I didn't have a big enough clamp, so I ended up using a ratchet strap and soft mallet which worked great.
I would increase the tension by one notch on the strap, which put off center force on the stub axle and it wouldn't move, but then by tapping the stub with the soft mallet on all sides, it would compress in on the spines. I did this notch by notch until it was fully compressed, and I could put in the spring washer, and snap ring fairly easily.
All done!
put about 500 miles on it since the repair with no leaks so far, holding up well. I need to get some kind of heat shield on the exhaust though