Nasty tear detected on driver's side ball joint boot. Grease leak spreading to the lower control arm. The passenger side is perfectly fine though.


Close-up of damage after I cleaned it up a bit. Kudos to Honda, there is no "joystick" feel to the shaft part of the ball joint after almost 100,000 miles.


Made in Thailand! Really? The nice folks at my neighborhood acura stealership charged me $14 for this ball joint boot.



I took me an hour of hard labor to remove the old ball joint boot from the ball joint. That's a lot of prying with a screwdriver. The black ring is what is left of the old boot.


After filling the new boot with grease and putting it on the old ball joint, it is back in business.


Assembled everything back. Took the baby out for a test drive at 12:30 am with an ice-cold coke.

 

That is what I was going to ask.

Does the bottom of the ball joint boot have a metal ring molded into the rubber which is then pressed onto the ball joint?

 

yes, it has a metal ring. Man, that thingy is a bitch to remove from the ball joint.