Quick “Boot Slide Mod” help

In preparation for my 4K mile trip coming up this week, I decided to give my truck a look over before leaving. I noticed my inner cv boots were rubbing. There is a noticeable line on one fin for each side. I can’t feel a groove when I ran my hands over it, but my current lift(2.5”ish) has only 1k miles on it. I attempted the easier boot slide of cutting the current clamp off and using a hose clamp but both of my attempts have failed. First time I tightened the clamp just enough for the rubber to deform which only lasted for a couple miles. Last night I tightened it even more than I did before. I pulled on the hose clamp and could not get it to rotate or move. Checked it again not even a mile down the road and it was back to the original spot.

So what current solutions do I have? My limited time until my trip limits me from doing the more permanent boot mod or buying high angle boots. Only options I can think of are:

1. Tighten hose clamp down as tight as possible. (Possible tearing of boot?)
2. Lower my current lift a bit (Don’t have time for alignment.)
3. Leave it and hope I don’t tear a boot (Really don’t want to do a trail side repair)

 

I've had my 2.5-3" lift on my vehicle for well over 50k miles now and I too have the ring you're describing. I keep an eye on it every oil change and check for leaks/groove cracks. Its been wearing typical with no noticeable signs/evidence of failure. With that said, you should be good to leave it and for the record, I've done moderate offroad trail driving on the factory unmodified boots (average trail use, not rock crawling). If you're looking for peice of mind, there are larger boots that you can purchase and swap out if you ever decide to rebuild your CVs or buy new/reman, I believe they are refered as High Angle Boots.

Options:
https://www.offroadsolutions.com/products/high-angle-inner-cv-boot/
https://www.dasmule.com/high-angle-inner-cv-boot-toyota/

Reman CVs
https://www.cvjreman.com/product-category/toyota-truck-axles/tacoma/

-J

 

Thank you! This is the information I was looking for. Puts me a little at ease about this upcoming trip. If it wasn’t 36 hours away from this post I would look at different options. With so little time I was worried. Hopeful it will at least get through some trails throughout CO and Moab. No rock crawling here either so there shouldn’t be any cv breaking angles.

 

Yeah, I drove all over the back roads of CO a few years back with this setup as well as most of the GA traverse. You should be good to go.

-J

 

Ya... I've got this same problem. My OME's gave me more lift than advertised or that I wanted. I'm not sure if there is a "fix" other than replace the CV's with better boots.