Replacing ball joint dust cover/boot?
 

Evening all,

A couple months ago I had one of my ball joints out (the ball joint going from front lower arm to hub) and noticed the rubber boot is quite deteriorated. I'm pleased to say I did not cause this damage :}. There's no play in the joint and to be perfectly honest, I am a bit put off replacing the lower arms after the numerous stories I've read so I'm wondering about just replacing the boot.

MOT time is approaching and I'm a bit worried the boot might be a fail. Has anyone ever replaced the boot only? I've seen some boots for sale online but I've never done this before so have no idea how to go about it. Any special tools required? What grease to use etc?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Andrew

Had the same on mine and was given land rover 214649.
Put that into Google and it brings up a few sellers.

Thanks to sonic zs for this number.
No special tools required, separate the joint , replace and refit.

Stan

Thanks, Stan. Great to have a part number and hear from someone that something fits.

Sorry if I'm being dense but I assume they're held on with retaining rings/springs. Can these just be put on by hand? Ie just pop the boot on and then stretch the springs over the boot and into their two positions?

Normally 2 metal rings,I use a small flat screwdriver and gently lever it over the lip ,when you look at it you will see its straight forward.

Stan

Not really advice as I have just ordered some of these, hopefully it's not too difficult! Some come with a fitting tool but i'm going to try it the way shown in this video, albeit on a bigger boot, looks like just a split pin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUnZm8mNy8U

John

Great! Thank you, kind people.

Ps glad I've got that box of split pins from Lidl now :D

Don't forget to take the opportunity to scrape out as much old grease as you can and pack it with fresh grease whilst wiggling it around, make it last a bit longer ;)


There are various methods of securing them, a coiled spring, a sprung split piece of wire, a springy plastic ring, three turns of wire that you can wind on like a keyring or two or three turns of wire with the ends twisted together, something made out of stainless welding wire that's saved my bacon a few times

Great info thank you. Is there a particular grease that's best or will any do? I have multi purpose ep2, white grease and a small amount of moly grease in my horrendously jumbled box of sprays and liquids :D

I always use lock wire to hold new ball boots in place. You can use pliers to twist it but if you have the correct lock wire pliers it looks better.

Every day's a school day. Just watched a video of the pliers in action. Great stuff.