Where to buy ball joint boots.... I find a source

[heiko910]

Hi there,
I thought I just share my findings in the attempt to buy good quality ball joint boots.
I have a 1977 bay window.
The ball joint boots on my bus started to deteriorate after 36 year so I decided to replace them.
I tested the ball joints for play and found them to be in great working order.
I cleaned, re-greased them and started to install new ball joint boots.

The first set I had was from Busdepot.com

I broke one of the set of four while installing. Those four were very thin and poor quality.

I went ahead ordered a replacement set of two overnight from www.piersideparts.net
I found those to be the same poor quality but I was able to finish the install.

In an inspection of the front suspension only 12 month later I found all four ball joint boots installed on my bus being cracked and falling apart.

This time I decided to first make some test purchases to find the very best available boots.

I found another vendor (Wolfgang international, www.Wolfgang.com)that has the same thin, poor quality boots as the others. Then I came across www.Bus-Boys.com and I am happy to report that their boots are much better quality. They are thick but still pliable. I am expecting those boots to last much longer. I will install the new boots soon and I will keep you posted about longevity.

I hope this information is going to help someone out there.
,Heiko

[babysnakes]

Thank you for the report. Good to know.

[cdennisg]

I hope the bus boys boots turn out be a good product. I have never had a good experience with new boots. I usually salvage 40 year old boots, and cure the cracks with some black RTV. hasn't failed me yet, but it doesn't look very good. Thankfully, I don't care about looks.
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nothing

[SGKent]

Thank you for the report. Appreciated.

just as an FYI - where one lives, parks and plays has a lot to do with how long a rubber boot lasts. Rubber boots are destroyed by O3 which is Ozone. That is put out by electric motors, cars, and anything sparking. Plants can also generate Ozone.

Below are Ozone maps of the USA. The yellow, orange and red areas are where Ozone is highest. If you live in one of these areas the rubber - especially boots etc, will rot faster than elsewhere. If you want, you can slow it down by keeping that rubber protected with wax, or any covering agents that keeps Ozone away from it. I try to leave the protective coating that boots etc come with on the rubber, and not clean it because this helps it live longer.

This is why some people have different results with the same rubber part manufactures.

Standard Map allowing for seasonal differences

USDA map showing highest concentrations in July due to plant effect on Ozone

[heiko910]

Thanks for the o3 and weather info.
That definitely has a big influence fortunately the busboys boots are much thicker and very solid material.

,Heiko

[SGKent]

[Wildthings]

I have used the boots from Bus Boys and had good luck. Haven't purchased any recently though so I can't say that they are still of the same quality.

[raygreenwood]

I am loathe to suggest this right now.....I have so my irons in so many fires. I am only posting lately because I have some rare time off.

I have the same problem with my 412 restoration. I have 3 sets of NOS ball joints for my car that have been in the box sp long that the boots have solidified and split. Bus boots dont fit and suitable boots are unobtanium.

So.....over the past month I have produced molds to cast the type 4 boots from high temp silicone. It requires two inner buck molds and three outer succesively larger molds.
I already have the inner layers cast. The inner is a highly oil proof medium temp silicone. The inner layer is .015" thick.
I am getting ready to the middle layer which is a high flexibility silicone that has a scrim netting impregnated in it. The outer layer is high temp silicone with s ightly higher durometer. Each layer has to be baked off to remove silicone oil before the next cast. The total boot thickness is .017" thicker than stock.

I am waiting for one last chemical to come in about 10 days....and trying to finish these becore I get back on the road. If they work correctly I have one more part to do for someone else that has been waiting for 2 years while I found time and correct chemicals. .....

And if there is enough interest I will do bus boots. I also have molds made for center link boots for type 4.....but those have no scrim and are simpler.

I am contemplating doing a crimp in, low profile CV boot if the method is successful and passes testing. Ray

[SGKent]

[raygreenwood]

YES!....that is my biggest source of proffessional embarrassment. ...and that is the parts that has been aborted for two years.
I have done a ton of pressure casting with a number of polymers.....but that simple looki g part ate my lunch.
Making the proper shape was a difficult exercise....as the original he sent was not stiff enough or precise enough to create really good molds from. The molds themselves....I have.....but at last years level of technology (my personnal level).....I repeatedly could not make a proper molded diaphragm part without destroying the mold.
It required far too much pressure (over 4000 psi) and about 30hg of vacuum. It first dest r oyed my composite polymer mold attempts.....then when I moved on to indium alloy molds...I could not get proper pfoduct flow.

What I discovered.....in the process of working with other clients in my industry....is what also has helped me mold proper ball joint boots. Not to let too many cats out of the bag but finding the chemically correct diluting agent for the silicones I am using.....that will not destroy any of the needed properties....was key.

However...though it makes very accurate vacuum and pressure molding of thin, narrow, high pressure molds possible.....it introduces a few extra steps if its a multilayer part. Each layer must have diluting agents baked out and then must be chemically cleaned to remove mold release agents. The mold release agent has an ultraviolet flourescing additive that allows me to verify that the layer is clean enough to mold over without separation issues.

Hoodsy will get his diaphrams.....as many as he needs.....at no charge from me. He has invested time effort and god knows what else. I solved many problems in pursuit of moldi g his parts.....and he has been more than patient. I have to finish my ball joint boots first because I cant assemble the front end until I have ball joints and the car has to move.
Ray

[67paulo]

Good quality German Meyle ball joint boots can be purchased from Jeffrey at Bus.OK
Bought some from him a few months back, they are the real deal. I was concerned mail ordering from the Netherlands but I must say it was painless and the shipping was very quick. They are thick, have the correct new clamps and are a breeze to install. check him out

Jeffrey@
www.busok.nl

[borninabus]

[raygreenwood]

A bit more on the ozone problems. The maps SGKent posted are accurate....but there is more to the puzzle than meets the eye. Ozone itself....has little or no effect on anything unless it is right at the source...within feet. Ozone dilutes, dispiates and begins to rise. This is how it gets up in the atmosphere where it should be. When it links up with other contaminants at a low altitude it becomes too heavy to rise.

However.....ozone coupled with hydrocarbons (VOC's, evaporated fuels, some evaporated acids and solvents and some particulates)...the classic building blocks of smog...are really whats eating the rubber.
Ozone when heated in the prescence of the right kind of hydrocarbons links up readily.
We use a lot of corona treating and UV curing in my industry. That produces vast quantities oc ozone....which is harmless if vented quickly to the atmosphere.

But......if not vented it attacks things. Specific things. How? ......as mentioned above....it goes after VOC's that have the right polarity to readily link up. The more a plastic, rubber or paint is outgassing solvents or plasticizers at its surface....the more readily immediate and concentrated ozone can attack it. Examples are painted and plastic sheilding and panels around and on UV units that have no line of sight to UV light or heat but are in close proximity. They start cracking and crazing and getting brittle.

Yes....there is some ground level ozone action out there operating on our rubber products...but not really that much in free open air. Like I said...more to this than meets the eye. What is most probably acting on our rubber parts the worst....is two things....one is ozone related.
1. Smog. Smog is partially created by ozone so there will be more corrosive smog in high ozone areas. But the make up of that smog has changed. With advent of the nationwide use of higher amounts of ethanol.....should I say failed advent.....although some NOX emissions have dropped in some areas (and other areas not).....hydrocarbons have risen and changed their make up.
2. I commented on this in a fuel line discussion about 3 years ago. The formulas for rubber have changed. They changed because we are on the high side of a 10 year worldwide shortage of the chemical butadiene.....a major catalyzing ingredient in synthetic rubber and nylon.
Several things are responsible for this.
A. Austomotive, aircraft, appliance, medical device, electronics manufacturers etc.....have had a vast upsurge in the last decade in the use of nylons and nylon alloys in all of their products (in cars...all elctrical plugs, suspension internal parts, noise vibration panels, fuel lines and many other parts are now nylon). So demand has been way up worldwide since about 2000 for parts that use a lot of butadiene.

B. When the recession hit, our friends in the big 3 shed hundreds of small companies that were serving the worldwide automotive industry almost exclusively. Two or three of these companies made nylons and rubber....and employed several tier 3 companies that made a surprisingly large share of the worlds butadiene and those tier two plastics and rubber manufacturers were their sole or primary customers. The tier 3 companies folded and no km me stepped in to replace them.

Most of the production of not only rubber and plastics finished goods.....but raw rubber and plastics used by companies....even in say...Germany to mold what would otherwise be quality parts.....went to China and other parts of the 3rd world.

Not being able to get the necessary butadiene to make quality nylon and rubber....China and others.....including companies here in the US....have resorted to other tried and true catalysts to make these products. Yes.....these formulas work but they are known to have less resistance to heat, oils, certain chemicals etc.....without tighter more expensive controls. Some companies have those controls....some do not.
Some of the larger polymer conglomerates haved moved hard on this in the past three years. One of the largest nylon plants in the world was starting construction in the Houston/Beaumont industrial corridor 2 years ago....and butadiene production is climbing worldwide. This may all get better....or not.

This has also heavily affected the price of tires in the past 7 years....because US and Euro tire companies dont scrimp on ingredients....so they are paying top dollar for the needed chemicals.
I spent a while looking into this over the last few years.

In reality it does not matter whose product you buy. It matters where the raw material came from and how it was formulated. Ray

[airschooled]

Wow what a coincidence this came up today. Thanks for all the top notch information everyone, it's much appreciated.

I bought 5 boots from Bus Boys last month, and when I went to swap them, I measured my joints at .080" of play. Out they went with reconditioned arms/new joints in. They came with boots on the joints, but I managed to rip the upper left boot jacking up the joint to get it to clear the stop arm. Luckily I had 5 spares, but I'm concerned about the boots that come on the joints. BB told me they used Nakata joints in an email, which is what other companies use in their reconditioned arms too. My replacement boots have a much larger lower pleat/fold than the boots that came on the arms. So now I have a Nakata factory boot on the lower left and upper right, and I put the BB replacement boots on the lower right and upper left- for science!! I will report back with findings about which boots last longer, or if I have any other problems. I was originally going to put 4 different brand boots on for a test, but nobody could even recommend another brand of boots to experiment with. Ray- I would pay a substantial amount for bus boots, but I understand most people won't, and life is short. Thanks for the work you've done already.

Robbie
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[raygreenwood]

In the boots I am working on right now the object is to make one that fits like factory, is much more chemical proof, is much harder to rip, is much more pliable and has no problem with smog and ozone.

Of course for my own vehicle (its a 412).... if it costs me $50 each its not a problem because the only other option is not driving the car. This is because new ball for 411 and 412 are all NOS.....very hard to come by and when available are roughly $65++....and still have 40 year old boots.

I wont even get into my labor costs because they dont matter. Its a project. Like any other part being made by any company I dont expect to recoup mold and chemical costs from just the first handful of parts. Its prohibitive.

I have come to understand that the cost and effort of simply replacing ball joints on busses is actually as bad or worse than the cost of the parts themselves. The bus owners need a solution as bad as type 4 car owners.

As with type 4 boots....I can probably keep the costs low by molding in sets and batches. The materials are not too bad if the quantities are right. Ray

[aerosurfer]

Very cool Info Ray! Keep up the good research

In the meantime, Bus-boys boots are good for me. I put them on last year with no problems at all either so far
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77 Westy 2.0L Rockin and Rolling Resto!

72 Sportsmobile (sold)
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[heiko910]

Lots of good information. I really hope someone will make it his mission and reproduce lots of vw rubber parts in a good quality because many parts are NLA or available only in poor quality.

[raygreenwood]

Parts that I can make from pressure CASTING.....as long as I can make the molds and pressure is low....and there is a market for it.....can be done. But that is CASTING. That would be silicone's, urethane's and a few odd polymers that work correctly or better than stock material for the intended part.

However...when it comes down to actual parts that must be rubber (like Buna-N or Neoprene)....that takes a lot of equipment and injection molding.

Even if I was already molding heat vulcanized types of rubber like that...bear in mind that a simple 1-4 up mold for a small 10 ton injection molding unit (cheap ones will fit in a mini van).....would cost roughly $10-20,000 (or more) made off-continent for a something simple like a control arm bushing.

Lots of other costs, logistics and issues (like electrical power, vacuum, ventilation and air emissions permits....not something you do in your workshop)....but I could not see making the cost back and making even break even costs at less than about 25,000 pieces.

This is the problem you are running into. There are some abilities with some small molding companies to make molds for this type of work that are temporary. But.....you may get 10 or 100 pieces before the mold craps out (usually for prototyping use). Even them its still not cheap. Those 10-100 pieces would typically run about $5,000-$10,000 total costs....cad work, polymer or soft metal mold machining, testing materials, labor etc.

Virtually no one would be willing to pay $100-$1000 for the part it produced.

As rubber parts supplies that are no longer made.... evaporate ....things like suspension bushings and boots, the owners of these vehicles need to start getting creative in what they are willing to use.

For instance....the control arm bushings on my 412...have not been manufactured since about 1989....and NOS just is not there at all. Also the original design is not perfect. Not bad..but not perfect. The rubber part of the bushing which is bonded to a metal bushing tube... tends to slide on its core bushing. It will run for a long time this way....but it changes your alignment...and speeds up wear of the radius arm bushings.

So...even if I could get them (the last set I saw NOS years ago went for about $70 each...two are required)...would I want to spend $140 on them now....have them slip on their bushings at 30-40k miles...and then have to replace them again in a few years when they are now even more unobtanium?

No....i would rather spend that money on finding a better bushing that works just as well and does not have the slipping issue...and will have a longer life.
So....I made mine from Delrin with flanged ends (delrin works awesome for suspension rotation bushings). It is now a two part bushing, stiffer than stock, uses the original bushing tubes from the stock bushing....and will handle better. Sounds like a winner right?

But....to make it with a simple attached flange it requires starting with 2.75" delrin rod stock. That is $29 per foot....which will produce three bushings
Add in coring it on a drill press with a live center, and then machining a step in it and rough milling it to proper length tolerance.....then producing an instructional about arm bore tolerance.....because you will have to clearance yours to press these in and they do need to be pressed in.....and these bushings will run about $25-30 each.

In my book....that's a bargain (for what I work on). I cant speak for the average bus owner on a part like that (I think the vanagon is the only one that has a similar part)....but many would squeal because they are still finding some stock re-pops or NOS for half the price (and with all the associated problems of either age, poor rubber or poor fit).

There are people ready and willing to make "most" of the needed parts....but the market has to be willing to pay what these parts cost....and most of the ACVW scene....most i say, not all....is not there yet. Ray

[wcfvw69]

[raygreenwood]

Yes worlfburg west and west coastetric are doing an awesome job. However in with some of what I see from both...they or their vendors are also running into some of the rubber quality issues. I buy things from both companies when I can.

Yes....the mental attitude is improving.

As for a lot of people having the tooling...not really. What you are seeing is short runs from some of the original OEM manufacturers who may have tooling that is still functional.....and can afford to run the parts based probably on excellent bulk/group buying practices on the part of WW and WCM......or some of the small run private Asian molding companies (many in Taiwan).
I know this is probably true for several reasons.
1. Because parts from both of these companies frequently go on long back orders
2. Because some of the repop parts though just fine and fully functional....show differences in mold type, shape and quality that are hallmarks of small molders with temporary or short run molds. No big deal.

However.....there are some more complex molded parts that you will likely just never see again. 20, 30 and 40 year old injection molding tooling for obscure parts just does not survive well. Its bulky and must be stored in absolute rustproof condition. A simple film of flash rust makes a complex injection mold.... virtually junk. It must be mirror finished. It costs an astronomical amount to re polish and resize a mold.

The really advantageous thing these days is that for moderate to small mding runs....a polymer original can be made on a tabletop CNC mill or 3D modeling unit.....to allow affordable casting of small sized molds....so things can be looking up. But its atill costly enough that you must have some guarantee of return. Ray
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