Silicone Tie Rod Boots

[Myotis1134]

Hey everyone, it's been a while.

 

I've decided to start rebuilding/upgrading my beast at the suspension level, and work my way up to the engine, body, then interior. I'm still on the suspension at the moment, and thus this question:

 

Just got some new Moog inner tie rods from summitracing.com, and am waiting for them to send me the "special order" ball-joints and outer tie rods (all Moog of course). And as usual, I feel the need to be hard-core about all of this, so in an attempt to find the best components for my steering-linkage project, I came across these silicone tie rod boots from Megan Racing. Naturally they are for a Nissan S13/S14, but honestly, how much difference can there be in a tie rod boot? Aside from length that is, but even then, I don't see there being a ridiculous amount of variance.

 

I don't have specs on either the lumina or the nissan gear box, so there's no way to determine how great the difference in size is, but the nissan isn't a big vehicle, and I'm thinking that especially on a compact sports car, the setup isn't going to be that much different in terms of measurement. Plus the boots are silicone- it'll be a plus if the large opening isn't quite large enough (tighter seal), and if it turns out to be too large, well zip-tie the shit out of it?

 

Hmm, kind of went all over the place with this. Question - does this have a reasonable chance of working if I want to put these on my car?

[White93z34]

based on the picture shown I'm not seeing the place for the pressure equalizer tube. As far as fitment goes get a caliper and measure the end of the lumina steering rack and tie rod to see if it will actually fit.

 

Not sure the why behind wanting silicone tie rod boots, unless otherwise damaged the stock ones are perfectly fine to reuse, unless you want blue inner tie rod boots that bad.

[Myotis1134]

Just crawled under the car and took a look at the existing boots, and they appear to be identical to the silicone ones in design. I'm not sure what you mean by there needing to be allowances in the boot for the pressure equalizer tube, the OEM boots look like they seal round the protruding portion of the rack and pinion housing tube on the inner side, and about halfway down the outter tie rod on the outside. I'm the first to admit that I don't know a lot about the steering system, can you explain it to me in more detail what you mean concerning the pressure equalizer tube?

 

As to the why, you could ask why bother with polyurethane bushings when rubber works just fine. The silicone boots are definitely an upgrade over rubber. Aside from silicone's superior hydrophillic properties with dust and water, it has higher heat resistance (although that's not a concern), as well as providing a superior seal compared to rubber. In this case the superior sealing capabilities are what I'm after; I'm about to replace parts of my steering linkage with much higher quality parts then are on now, and I want to do my best to protect them. I'm up here in AK, and it's going to dump snow any day, which means there will be snow, water, sand, and salt everywhere. It's hell on a car, and I figure these boots will help.

 

And I only want the blue boots because they don't carry them in pink.

[White93z34]

well poly is used as it does not give as much as rubber generating a crisper response to steering/suspension movments.... not sure what that has to do with this though. Maybe I can't wrap my head around how the rubber boots don't seal well. its pretty simple the rubber have a grove that they sit in on the rack then a steel ring goes around both ends to keep moisture out. If moisture getting in these is a problem I've never heard of it on a undamaged boot.

 

But anyhow. the pressure equalizer tube on the factory boots has its own little port that it fits into on each one to ensure a weather tight fit. it looks like its slipped under the ring but it is not. The idea behind it is when you turn the wheel to the right or left there will be air that needs displaced on whichever end of the rack is pulling, so it displaces it to the other side.

[Myotis1134]

Well the poly vs rubber argument was simply meant to show that just because something works, there are sometimes "superior" alternatives that can be used depending on a person's preference.

 

As for the pressure equalizer tube, that is something I didn't know about, so thank you for explaining it to me. I must ask though, is the absence of a pressure equalizer a deal-breaker? The silicone boots don't have this, and I don't recall seeing anything like what you have described on any of the pictures of the various tie rod boots I browsed through before I found the silicones. Granted that doesn't mean they weren't there, just that the pics didn't show them. Is enough air displaced that it might blow through the seal if it doesn't have somewhere else to go?

 

Ok, now I'm seeing the equalizer ports all over the place (wasn't looking for them before). Apparently it's a concern to boot-makers. Dammit! silicone boots would have been cool. Guess the next step is to call megan racing and see if the equalizer port just isn't shown.

 

p.s. you da man chris.

[Myotis1134]

E-mailed support at Megan Racing last night, and asked them for confirmation of existence of the pressure equalization tube, along with inner and outer diameters of the boot. We'll see what happens with that.

 

I also want to point out that when I used the term hydrophillic earlier, what I really meant was hydrophobic, as the term hydrophillic means to have a strong affinity for water, and that's not what silicone does.

[BXX]

stock tie rod boots seal perfectly fine to keep road debris out and rarely crack or split open. Those are just ricer parts for import guys to show off an unseen useless upgrade.

 

there are no advantages to using those silicone boots compared to stock unless you want blue boots. Of course you can save money and spray paint them.

 

also, good luck with the hecho en mexico moog parts. Their quality is nowhere what it used to be. If you want badass parts, track down an XRF dealer, or go with good ol Federal Mogul parts and save cash once again. And with FM parts you won't fight to get the damn grease fittings in like you will on the Moog parts.