Ball joint boot replacement

Technical Area Steering & Suspension
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  1. My model of MX-5 is: __ NC1
  2. I’m based near: __
  3. I’m looking for technical help or recommendations on: __

Wondering if any members have replaced ball joint boots.

If so any tips would be appreciated, ie technique / tooling required.

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Hi PaleRider,

I replaced a few on the rear of my nc.
I took the arms off and had them on a bench.
Really easy to remove with a stanley knife.
They are glued? to the arms only at the bottom of the boot.
Getting the new ones on was much trickier. For the smaller ones I used a large adjustable spanner to kinda push it in 4 places at once. The bigger ones needed bits of metal and clamps and some swearing but perseverance got it done after 10-15mins.
Once on don’t move the ball joint from the central position as the new boot may pop off.
Once clamped back on the car there’s no problem.

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I should add that I didn’t need to cut the old boot but ran the blade around, between the boot and the arm, to force them apart. There were a few patches of rust on mine so there were some useful gaps to start off.

If you have a big enough socket so that it fits over the new boot then that would probably work better than the method I used!

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First off , welcome along to the forum :+1:

Thanks for the reply, my rear arms are also on the bench in the shed for poly bushes to be fitted over the winter.

I’ve bought a couple of new arms from Bofi racing (non genuine Mazda) for a reasonable price and I’m re using other genuine arms (the more expensive to replace ones :rofl:)so boots needed here.

Did you pack with grease ? Is it necessary ?

Cheers

P

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Thanks for the welcome :+1:

I did replace the grease where the boots had split and the grease was grubby.
On the others, although the boots were going, they had not yet split and the grease was clean so I left them.

I hope this helps.

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