Cracking ball joint boot

Was doing some maintenance on the truck today when I noticed both my ball joint boots are cracking. I installed some dirt king moog ball joint uca's in December of 2019, so at most 12,000 miles. Has anyone else had this problem?

 

Almost looks like cheap rubber material... probably shouldn’t look like that so soon

 

Did the boots come with the UCA's?
If so, they screwed you on the boots. More cheap after market stuff.

G.

 

Dirt King = No Warranty too. But yeah, you can get some Moog problem solver ball joint boots and be good to go. That’s unfortunate from a company that specifically disclaims all warranties on the products they sell though.

Edit: Maybe call Moog directly. They have good customer service. Moog products aren’t what they used to be though.

 

Are they actually a problem solver. Or just marketing ?

 

Back in the day their problem solver line was actually some problem solvers. Now I think it’s marketing.

 

When i purchased moog front end parts for my tundra they were all cheap crap. They were once pretty good back in the 80's.

 

Happens. Both of my SPC rubber boots have slight cracks in them too. Probably have around 15k on them.

 

The boots always seemed to crack open pretty fast on the moog stuff I have used in the past.

 

It’s amazing how OEM rubber parts can last decades and aftermarket always falls to pieces in the first year or two. There’s more to making a reliable vehicle than meets the eye it seems.

 

The angle on that uniball looks pretty aggressive. How high is the front lifted?

 

Yep.
I've been around the block and the only exception I've seen to this, at least among well known Japanese manufacturers, were the rubber bits on the 2nd gen Kawasaki KLR650's. Rubber parts rotted off those bikes like a banana in the hot sun. Turn signal stalks fell apart so fast they actually recalled them.
FWIW, they blamed it on Taiwanese sourced rubber, IIRC. lol

 

Sounds like Toyota with their rusty frames “a mistake was made by our suppliers”..........

 

^ indeed. lol

 

I've had good luck with oem and Raybestos.

 

I had the truck up on jacks doing maintenence so its full droop... I only have a 2 inch lift and the ucas are built to handle 1-3

 

So dirt king said they think the cracking is probably caused by a cleaning agent i used but they are sending me out a new set of boots.

 

I had the same issue with my 2004 Rubicon. (Finally sold it WoooHooo!!!!) I installed all new Moog ball joints on it within the past year. A couple of them were already cracking before I sold it. Best I could figure is that at some point in the past, I over torqued the tapered fitting and enlarged the hole causing excess wear on the rubber boot. (Boot was over compressed) Not saying this is your problem, just my experience.

 

Good to know I'll double check the torque settings before I reninstall