Upper ball joint polyurethane replacement boot save your control arm . Take a look!

leftynridge

leftynridge

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Aug 30, 2009
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This thread is for people who are looking for ways to save your ball joint dew to the torn 20+ year old ball joint boot. Now alot of you may know already that the upper ball joint will rarely go bad but if the boot tears then there is a good chance that it might go bad sooner then later. I am in the process of restoring my 88 turbo and I am currently working on replacing all the bushings on the front and rear suspension. While taking the front upper control arms off I noticed that the boots were torn. The sucky part is we all know that if you want to replace the ball joint you will have to replace the whole control arm and depending on what you wanted to spend I've seen them for $180 a pair on ebay and $400 a piece from toyota. I for one did not want to spend either since both ball joints were in good working order. So I began to search and found that Energy Suspension sales polyurethane ball joint replacement boots and thought this could be a possibility. I will walk you through the stops of choosing the right boot as well as installation. So here we go:

Total Cost by the way was $13 shipped for 4 boots.

Here is a link to the there web site: You want to go with piece number 13009. Also go to the store and get your self some grease and silicone. You will need the grease to re-grease your joint and the silicone to seal the boot.
http://img155.imageshack.us/i/1010225l.jpg/
http://www.energysuspensionparts.com/Energy-Suspension-Universal-Dust-Boots.asp

Step 1: First you want to start off by removing the boot
http://img718.imageshack.us/i/1010218n.jpg/

Step 2: Once you have removed the boot there will be a nut that is attached around the bolt of the ball joint. It is used to prevent grease from escaping the bottom of the boot. You will need to remove this in order to get the ploy boot to go on all the way.
http://img59.imageshack.us/i/1010220.jpg/

Step 3: You will need to clean up the surface in order to put the silicone on. At this point it would not hurt to go ahead and grease up the joint a little.
http://img513.imageshack.us/i/1010221k.jpg/
http://img23.imageshack.us/i/10102352.jpg/

Step 4: Now you will need to put a little silicone around the outside of the joint to make sure it seals up good. Also try not to get silicone into the joint itself because once it drys it will clump up.
http://img209.imageshack.us/i/10102292.jpg/

Step 5: The last step you will want to go ahead and put the boot on the ball joint, insert the arm into the steering knuckle and put the nut on the joint and tighten it up. This will apply pressure to the boot pushing up against the lip of the ball joint and allowing the silicone time to set up. Also put another beed of silicone around the bottom of the boot and let it set and dry.
http://img522.imageshack.us/i/10102302.jpg/

Note: I would not do this as what some might think is an upgrade since these are poly boots. If they were designed for our cars I would say go ahead and upgrade. They are much stiffer then stock boots but I would only try this if the boots were torn and you had no other choice.
 
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modmonster2008

modmonster2008

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Sep 9, 2008
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Nice write up, i just had a question though, you said the part # is 13009 and i saw it comes in a set of two, one set is for upper/lower ball joints right? Also i wanted to know, what is the difference between using the stock boot and the polyurethane ones?
 
leftynridge

leftynridge

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Yes the part number is 13009 but you only need 2. They come in quantity of 2 and this would only be for the upper ball joints for the front maybe the rear. I'm not 100% positive if the front upper ball joints are the same as the rear upper ball joints. They were so cheap I got two sets anyway just in case the rears had the same problem. You can replace the front lower ball joints without replacing the whole control arm pretty cheap on ebay. Its the uppers that are the problem. If your upper ball joints go bad you have to replace the whole control arm. Mine were not bad but would of probably went bad eventually if I did not replace the boots.

The lower ball joint attaches to the control arm by 4 bolts and the upper ball joint is just simply apart of the arm. (pressed in).

Here is a link to a set of lower ball joints:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/2-Lower-Ball-Joint-Toyota-SUPRA-86-87-88-89-90-91-92-_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQfitsZModelQ3aSupraQQhashZitem20aebe7af8QQitemZ140370672376QQptZMotorsQ5fCarQ5fTruckQ5fPartsQ5fAccessories

Also the lower ball joints are much bigger and I would not recommend doing this for a number of reasons. The lowers hold all the weight and would wear out faster, easily replaceable (cheap), changing the boot would not be worth the time, and I don't think they have one big enough for the lowers.
 
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suprageezer

suprageezer

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Aug 27, 2005
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Adding some info for this great write up. At rockauto.com you can buy Dorman upper Control Arms 520488 for 78.89 Each, Beck Arnleys for 188.79 Each, almost worth it to replace it with either of these when taking apart to install new poly boots. I bought my Moog Lower Ball Joints K9521, there for 52.89 Each.
 
leftynridge

leftynridge

Member
Aug 30, 2009
401
0
16
dayton, ohio
suprageezer;1659113 said:
Adding some info for this great write up. At rockauto.com you can buy Dorman upper Control Arms 520488 for 78.89 Each, Beck Arnleys for 188.79 Each, almost worth it to replace it with either of these when taking apart to install new poly boots. I bought my Moog Lower Ball Joints K9521, there for 52.89 Each.
Click to expand...

I appreciate the info but I would not recommend buying new control arms and destroying perfectly good ball joint boots. Let me say that I would not consider this in upgrade yet because the poly boots have not been thoroughly tested yet on my car. This is more for people that don't have bad ball joints but have torn ball joint boots and would like to prevent having to replace the whole control arm. I spent $13 shippped for 4 ploy boots from Energy Suspension.

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winsauce;1659142 said:
lookin good, nice to see ppl contributing info... those blue suspention components look awesome btw
Click to expand...

Thanks man.
 
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K

k20maniac

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Feb 8, 2009
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how have these been working out for you?? I am looking into doing the same upgrade.. also the pics dont work anymore =/ it would be really helpful if you still have them around!
 
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