Well if I'm understanding you correctly then this is what I hoped.

No strut removal and no upper arm removal but this instead:

1. Car up on jack stands.
2. remove wheels.
3. support suspension from below with floor jack .
4. undo nut on joint and lower a bit.
5. remove old boot/clean/grease/install new boot with original clips.
6. reverse assembly.

I just wanted to be sure there was no danger of something flying apart because of the suspension springs.

Sound right? That would be a tremendous time saver.

Thanks.

 

You are right on!!! Let us know how it turns out.

Tom

 

How did you fit the boots to the upper ball joints?
Did you remove the the ball joint nut and use a ball joint separator to loosen the ball joint shaft?

 

This is from user nhdoc; who pm me other info, but you can find his original post here. https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...orn-up-134465/"If yours is the same as mine you can loosen the nut and push the ball joint up and out, then remove the old boot. You will see there are retaining rings on the old boot once you remove it and you can re-use them. The new boot stretches over the ring that sits at the bottom of the threaded shaft (put a little grease on it to help it slide over). As I recall I lifted the car and removed the weight off the wheel, then the nut can be removed and the upper arm will simply come up and out of the knuckle. I did need to manipulate it a little to get it back in, just a matter of lowering the car a little to align the hole in the knuckle with the ball joint so it can go in."


Tom in Plano/Dallas

 

Dan R Wrote
_________________How did you fit the boots to the upper ball joints?
Did you remove the the ball joint nut and use a ball joint separator to loosen the ball joint shaft?_
Yes i needed to use one to separate the joint on all that i've done.

 

Probably depends on the car as to the use of a separator. Did you have an problems with the attachment/retaining rings at all?

Tom

 

No, just greasy & dirty, find an end, then spiral it off with your finger nail. Take your time, things should work out fine.

 

Is it possible to utilize the old spiral spring wrap if one is careful or am I going to have use a narrow wire tie which doesn't appeal very much to me?

Glad I bought enough of these as every boot is split on my car.

We have gawd awful roads here so it sort of figures.

I'm in the middle of this now along with a full brake job rotors & pads.

 

Yes they often clean up very nicely. Painted white on mine, looks nice against the black boot.

 

These are quite fussy to get off. The bottom retaining clip does indeed come off and while not completely circular now it may have been that way to begin with.

The remnants of the boot look more like pieces of chewed licorice or gummy bears than an old boot. Really junky stuff ...

But that top ring is not spring steel and gets bent out of shape coming off so unless I had some new special form fitting plier to re-crimp it it's junk now.

NO way could I get my circlip spreader pliers in there and it would have bent the clip too anyway.

That's an awfully narrow spot to put a plastic wire tie into. Small diameter as well.

I think I'll ask my local mechanic who has replaced boots on my Suburban's ball joints what he'd do?

Otherwise this looks like a short term fix to me.

 

I think the original clip is OK for the bottom and instead of a wire tie on top which is bit wide and even wider with the head I'm going to use some of SS safety wire and put several loops around the top. Then I'll twist it reasonably tight and put a piece of heat shrink on the twist before I push it flat against the boot.

Let's see how that goes.

 

Somewhere there is a post that Mercedes has a boot kit that includes thin zip ties.

 

Well neither of the original retaining pieces are viable for re-use IMHO. I really tried but WO a special tool or some trick as to how to install the bigger lower one all I ended up doing was distorting the spring steel one and being very worried about tearing the new boot so I bailed on that idea. While there is more room on the larger end my thin zip ties are too short for that so I went with the several wraps of SS wire and twisted it tight ala safety wire.

Here's what it looks like after twisting.




And here it is after the heatshrink with a folded over end and pushed up against the joint




Next up was attaching the tie rod end and torquing the nut. THis is where I'm having some confusion. My JTIS only goes to 2004 and mine is a 2005. Sometimes their terminology is bit different that here in the USA so reading the torque tightening specs is not confidence inspiring. So I went to the service procedure to get them.

It says 55nm on the tie-rod end though I have a box wrench on that nut with an allen wrench tip connected to by torque wrench inserted into the joint's tip. Frankly, 55 nm seems a bit high for that tip.




Then I compared this "ball joint" to the one on the upper arm tip and they're about the same size except that the upper on has a solid square tip which should be stronger. The torqued specified for that one is 90 nm or almost DOUBLE! This seems wrong to me? Here's a photo of that one.




It's the same wrench size for the nut too. Obviously there's more load on that than the tie rod end application but ...


Any comments?

This tie rod end took about 2 hours with it already being apart. So for cleaning, greasing, figuring how to get the boot on (not so easy) and then futzing with the original lower clip plus wire wrapping it instead it was 2 hrs.

The next one will be quicker but that upper arm ball joint is going to be much harder to wire wrap because of the awkward position with the car on jack stands.

 

So I've loosened the upper one and it's certainly not on there with 90 NM. I was pretty loose in terms of being tightly secured to the upright but the nut on the end of the ball joint is actually quite stiff and seems to be getting stiffer the more I loosen it up. In fact it's getting so stiff near the end that I've stopped and put some Kroil on it to sit overnight. Perhaps it's just the exposed threads corrosion binding badly in the nyloc?

 

You may need a bit of heat to persuade it to let go. Twisted one of my allen wrenches like a screw. A bit of heat, with a replacement wrench, did the trick. My springs spiraled right off, & onto the new boots nicely. Sorry about yours, looks like the wire should work out well enough.

 

How did you wind the spiral back on? Off was easy as the boot was all torn but did you put the spiral on the assembly 1st then push the boot on so that the spiral didn't have to clear the bulge of the boot?

That looked a bit tricky whereas what I tried was impossible.

 

Caught the end with my thumb nail, started from there, to take off, a bit of grease, will let you shove it back into its proper place easy enough after boots in place.Or wind it back on like you wound it off.

 

Yeah, well impossible for me to do that even with needle nose pliers holding the end not on and holding the other end on and in place. Just too much of an expansion required to make it over that boot. Oh well ... I think I'll go with the wire wrap. That's pretty straight forward.

Now for the torque specs for tightening. They make absolutely no sense at all to me. That upper ball joint did not have a nut tightened to 90 nm. More like 15 ft lbs. I think 90 nm would snap that tiny stude head that protrudes.
So something's wrong with what they're specifying in the service manual that have, Perhaps that's for an entirely different style of ball joint?

Even the lower one @ 55 NM makes no sense.

Yet they do need to be tight!

 

All the fitting of the rings, on, as well as off, were done by hand, with nimble fingers, & not with pliers.

 

Just curious what you did about the top ring?

That's just soft steel and does not come off WO getting bent.