Mazda 3 lower arm ball joint

[stepaway]

Evening all. I’ve got a knocking ball joint with visible play on my 2009 Mazda 3 lower arm.

Managed to get a brand new OEM lower arm off the ‘bay for a much more reasonable price than the stealers want. Yes I know it’s a gamble but as it’s brand new and the seller confirmed it was 100% I went with it.

It turned up tonight, had a quick look and all seems well bar the ball joint boot is slightly creased and appears to have a minimal but visible amount of grease visible where the retaining shaft comes out the top of the boot. They are non-greasable as I understand it. Should it be completely dry/sealed?

Is this ok or not please? There are no visible holes or splits etc on the boot, just the crease.

Thanks in advance

[Smint]

Suspect the boot got pressed up against something during transit, pushing the grease up so its oozing out slightly.

Be inclined to inject a little extra grease in through a syringe fitting and then apply a very tight band or small cable tie to the neck to help keep grease in and water out, i'm sure boots often used to have such a band fitted.

Doesn't seem that long ago when various ball joints had grease nipples, if owners could be arsed to grease them every year they'd see the entire life of the vehicle out, indeed i've seen various youtube videos of diy'ers drilling an tapping in grease nipples so they could extend the service life of such parts, anyone else remember grease nipples regularly found on handbrake cables too.

[thebraketester]

Where are the metal retaining bands? There should be no grease externally on those boots.

[E-bmw]

thebraketester said:

Where are the metal retaining bands? There should be no grease externally on those boots.

Wot 'e said.



Seen in this pic in red/blue.

Having said that, if you can get them off the original I would still fit it.

[stepaway]

Thanks all. Will get my head under the car later to see if the originals have them fitted.

I can’t see any kind of detent on the new one that would allow the ring to be fitted though, and there doesn’t seem to be anything shown on the Mazda parts diagram?

[E-bmw]

stepaway said:

I can t see any kind of detent on the new one that would allow the ring to be fitted though,

I can quite clearly see in your pic exactly where they would go.

1 about 3mm below where your upper arrow lands.

Another about 7mm below where your lower arrow lands.

They are basically just a coil & a half of spring steel, real easy to swap from old to new, just beware of puncturing the boot obviously.

[stepaway]

Thanks E-BMW, got you now

[GreenV8S]

E-bmw said:

real easy to swap from old to new, just beware of puncturing the boot obviously.

Real easy to swap, but the absence would concern me. I've never seen a good quality component without them. These would usually be fitted as part of the production assembly process before the component is bagged and packaged. The fact they're missing makes me worry that either the component has been messed with, or came from a dubious production line. For example, if you had some grotty old components that you wanted to blast and repaint then you'd need to dismantle them and might not bother putting them back together properly. And then you'd sell your garbage at bargain basement prices on ebay ...