Damaged LBJ yesterday, how bad is it?

Yesterday i was messing with lower control arm stuff, had to remove LBJ castle nut and bolt from LC.

Well now the LBJ is leaking grease from the boot, not sure if I somehow damaged during or after removal.

For such a critical component and severity of it breaking, I don’t really know how to tell damage without obvious signs like severe boot breakdown. Besides risk of it drying out over time, are there any immediate risks or things I can check to ensure it’s good to use?

 

Quite possibly not damaged at all. You might have just squeezed some grease out. Unless you know something happened that really banged it. I'd guess you just squeezed it a bit and forced some grease out. Might be worth taking it back apart before too long to see if the boot is damaged, or if you just squeezed out some grease.

I know we don't want to mess with LBJs, but I just replaced UBJs on my Tundra that had long since lost all the grease. Boots were torn and crumbling. Had likely been that way for years. The joint itself really wasn't that bad, surprisingly.

But yeah, because it's the LBJ, probably worth checking. But like I said, the boot is just a boot. It holds grease in. Eventually, if all the grease comes out, the joint gets dry, damaged, fails. But right now it looks like you've lost a drip of grease from a joint packed with grease.

It's always a good idea to use new cotter pins when you do work on castle nuts...

 

I would guess that a little grease squeezed out when you took it off, or put it back together.
If nothing looks torn, wipe the grease clean from the lbj and watch to see if it comes back.

 

I just replaced this LBJ 1.5 years ago so it’s practically new

Long story, pitman puller damaged the threads yesterday which made reinstalling castle nut difficult, didn’t realize right away and some of my efforts to install (like pushing or prying LCA into LBJ to stop bolt from rotating) may have caused the leaking, but I really can’t be sure.

fixed the thread with dremel and eventually got the nut installed (the damaged thread was very small, only one side of the first 2 rows, nothing major)

all things considered with threading and grease I ordered a new LBJ last night (Toyota parts has 20% off right now so figured better now and keep a spare if anything) but it’s really a matter of “how long to wait” or maybe just cancelling the order if this all seems like excessive worry.

 

I'd just wipe it and watch it. FWIW LBJ's are a 100k replace. No questions asked. I'm at 275k currently and I've never pulled an LBJ off w/ any slop in it. My uppers however, had a TON of play in them when I replaced my UCA's after my lift. I have Uniballs.