96XJ_MrFantastic

I replaced my CPS today and while I was under the Jeep I decided to grease up everything as well. I noticed most of my ball joint boots were cracked, along with the boots for my drag link ends and one end of my tie rod.

Let's say my ball joints are all still perfectly functional. What brands of boots do you guys recommend for replacement? Or would you just bite the bullet and replace the ball joints since they could have been compromised by an assortment of debris?
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Morris 4x4 makes a synthetic ball joint boot that looks like good quality. $10 for upper and lower. Any other suggestions or recommendations? Im new to Jeeps and 4x4s in general.

tinytrax78

energy suspension makes them for around 6.99 a pair

PatHenry

With the work required to put boots on the ball joints, you'd be out of your mind to not replace the ball joints. Unless you have some super high end joints on there and know for sure they are in excellent condition, it's only a little extra work to press out the old joints and press new ones in.
You can get new joints for $30-ish each for a quality brand or only a little more for Spicer OEM. I believe you can get Spicer knurled joints if the old ones are not the original.

96XJ_MrFantastic

Gotcha, good advice. I have a 400 mile round trip road trip in a few days. If I greased everything up beforehand do you think I'd be okay? I bought the rig recently and have put a couple hundred miles on it with no issues indicating worn joints etc

tinytrax78

grease it up it will be fine . I have seen them survive years without the boots just keep em greased up every oil change and run em till they are shot

PatHenry

I agree with tinytrax - grease those suckers up and keep them greased until you get around to replacing them.

Your local parts retailer will have a ball joint press you can rent as a free loaner tool (you just put down a deposit) to do the Ball joints yourself. Just make sure it has the D30 (often called 4wd) cups. Locally for me both Autozone and Advance have the Powerbuilt 53 (iirc) piece set that has the correct cups. If they have a small and large set, get the large one and you should be good. The D30 uses a slanted cup on one of them...

Jeepwalker

If there are just a couple cracks, clean off the grease and wipe the rubber clean with solvent, then apply some Permatex Ultra-Black RTV over the crack. Let it cure before flexing. If you look on ebay, there are some sellers out of the Balkins selling quality boots cheap. I might buy some for tie-rod ends. If ya have a ball joint/suspension press kit, it's a piece of cake to drop tie rod ends w/o damaging them.

PatHenry

You can do the whole steering setup for a couple hundred bucks in parts (320-ish if you include ball joints) if you do it yourself.

I did mine recently and it's nice and tight and drives awesome.

PatHenry

Honestly, with all the tie rod stuff, if you're going to take them apart and they're not recently replaced (and you're not using super high end performance parts), unless you're on a really tight budget it just makes sense to replace them.
That's just my opinion, of course - as always - it's your Jeep to do with as you choose.

96XJ_MrFantastic

Thanks everyone! I greased everything up and will see if Santa (also known as the wife) brings me a ball joint set this Christmas.

PatHenry

You might want to ask Santa for an impact driver if you don't have one already. You don't need anything fancy, but the "impact" hammering action will save you much frustration when dealing with any ball jointed (so "ball joints" and tie rods) part that has a tendency to spin the whole stud rather than backing off the nut.

96XJ_MrFantastic

Does anyone have a brand of ball joints they'd recommend? A Dana kit can be had for just over $100 on Rock Auto. Morris 4x4 has a Crown kit for $90. Is it worth the price jump up to $200 for an HD Alloy USA or Synergy kit? I only do light off roading, nothing crazy.

PatHenry

I have had Moog for the past year and they've been good. Avoid the Autozone special - I must have done 3 sets over 120k using those.

The Dana would be the preferred brand, but if they've been replaced before with knurled joints (the little ridges on the mating surface) you may not be able to use the smooth surface Dana's. If they've been replaced several times, you'll need "oversize" joints (this is unlikely).

I've not heard of anyone using Crown.

Unless you're putting oversize tires (like more than 31") you are probably not going to see any advantage with a "performance" type like the HD or Synergy. I have no experience with these personally, but I've found sometimes "performance" stuff to be more hype and less quality than OEM - just my opinion though.

tinytrax78

I run the alloy usa balljoints but I am hard on equipment lol

96XJ_MrFantastic

I'm running 31s on a 3" lift. I believe only one ball joint has been replaced in the past but I'll get underneath it and check before ordering. I also haven't even made it through all of the maintenance history paperwork that came with the Jeep yet. It dates all the way back to '96 when it was new!