Protecting steering column UJ's

[bobfather]

That's the second time I've had to replace these UJ's. Let's hope this pair last a little longer inside their rubber boots

[ClassiChimi]

Nice.

[zed4]

I wanted to do that to mine when I had problems with them. But try as I might, I could not get the central rod out to actually remove the UJs. There just wasn't enough movement in the joints to allow it to come out. So I cleaned mine up and oiled them liberally and they've been fine since. I would still like to cover them.

[bobfather]

I couldn't remove the rod either. I took both bolts out of the top UJ and the bottom of the rod. There is a key-way cut into the rod for the bolts so the bolts must be removed to allow movement. This allowed the rod to be inserted fully into both UJ's giving enough clearance for the top UJ to extract from the top column section. Don't forget to mark up the UJ position on the splines

[Hedgehopper]

That's a nice idea but how have you sealed the upper, large end of the boot? Would be interested to know.

[bobfather]

I bought two generic Mini steering rack boots from eBay. These appeared to have the nearest sizing for this job. The ends had three size options so I could cut off the smaller diameter section until I got to one the right size. I put both boots on the centre rod and rebuilt the column fully tightening the UJ's. The boots were then stretched over the UJ's and a tie-rap fitted on the ends to seal the boots to the shafts

[NZ fan]

Hedgehopper said:

That's a nice idea but how have you sealed the upper, large end of the boot? Would be interested to know.

This is a good point. If water can get into that top boot (when driving in the rain there must be a constant stream of water thrown up there) it will fill up and be a water bath for the top joint so it's imperative that it is water tight up there.
On my car there was about 3mm of shaft showing above the top joint so I made up a stepped collar out of nylon. The id seals on the shaft and the od is bigger than the joint ans steps forward so it's about 12mm wide for the boot to clamp onto
Iyswim?

[bobfather]

Now I see the issue, mine has about 15mm of shaft at the top so sealing to the shaft was easy