anyone have any mileage on the BMP ball joint boots?..

[ryan roopnarine]

i just got my set in the mail, and mocked them up to a control arm i had lying around.....BIG question

do they stay on well?
as these things i got have no bottom "lip" to engage with the rim on the ball joint, i wonder how well they actually work in practice. i guess the weight of the car puts enough force on it to hold it down? anyone with practical experience, please. if they DO work well in the real world, i can see a REEEAALLL big savings by strapping them on the hamburg technic/trw arms that they sell on ebay (you all know, the one package that has two thrust arms, two control arms, all m5 bushings, two tie rods and a pittman arm for $250 or so).

if i had my dig. camera here id take a pic to show you all what I got. right now, they have a special on, its 4 boots plus 100g tube of lubro moly MoS2 grease for under $11.

on a tangent....them durn germanians damn well know how to do their chemistry, don't they i buy lots of oil and oil related products (greases). i've tried every grease i could get my hand on on a old thrust arm i have sitting around so i could evaluate the stuff in a non-critical environment. all have done okay, but there was still "feelable" (not gauge) play in the joint. i put some of this lubromoly (judging by the name its just molybdenum disulphate grease) and all the feelable play is gone, no matter how i twiddle with it! im buying another tube of this stuff from the ger. car place in town to use on other cars.

[Blitzkrieg Bob]

did the hamburg stuff come without boots?

[winfred]

i saw some a few years ago on a e30 and they looked like ****, sorta like a urethane version of a old chevy umbrella boot, i guess you could extract another year or so out of a joint IF you got the boot on before the old boot let in dirt, but i've seen many joints wear out before the boots split, i've seen some joints last a couple more years after the boot craps

[ryan roopnarine]

did the hamburg stuff come without boots?

the hamburg comes with boots. people seem to have issues, however, with the boots cracking prematurely.