tire rod boot job

[paulo]

2000 Legacy GT wagon

193K km's

 

I just took my car in for a quick oil change at the dealer where i bought the car.

 

They've called me to say that the two tire rod boots are torn, and it'll be $680 to replace them along with the tire rods. Might as well if you're in there, they say.

 

Seems steep. If I am going to spend that kinda dough, should i just wait until I hear the sounds of the tire rods being shot? I understand its a knocking and maybe crunching sound when turning?

 

There are currently no signs or sounds that this was even an issue...

 

Thoughts?

 

Thanks in advance!

[johnceggleston]

i had a local garage replace both of my ''bellows'' with napa parts, $125. labor was $30 a side and parts $65 for both. and they weren't even a subaru shop. i was going to do it my self, but working on jack stands i couldn't get a long enough breaker bar on the lock nut to break them lose.

 

if you don't need the tie rod ends, inner or outer, i'd leave them alone. they could go another 50k miles, or more. and if you know what you are doing, you don't even need a front end alignment afterwards.

 

i wouldn't do it. anf if i decided i was going to do it , i would get a second price quote from a different shop..

 

any chance the bellows were good before you took the car in??

[idosubaru]

way too expensive, go somewhere else.

 

replacing the boots is a fine option. subaru tie rods very rarely fail.

 

i've replaced a bunch, it's only an hour or two labor - and it's really easy. the only thing that makes it hard is rust and shops have tools at their disposal to make that a non-issue.

 

there's isn't much difference in labor between replacing the part and the boot - it's like one extra step since the tie rod has to be half remvoed (the hard part) anyway. so to that end - the shop was right - part price is the only thing additional.

 

have someone that knows how to do it right and there's no need for an alignment either like JCE mentioned.

[987687]

I had my inner tie rod fail because of a bad boot. It didn't break, but I failed inspection because it was pretty loose.

I ended up having to replace both inner and outer tie rod ends because the jam nut was so rusted it just crumbled when I tried to get it loose.

It ended up being around $100 in parts, but only half an hour labor. It's pretty easy. I just measured the old assembly and matched the new one to the same length. Alignment was fine afterwards.

 

But if yours comes loose, there's no reason to replace the tie rod at the same time. If the joins are in good condition, just leave it. It's extra labor to take it out. So long as it isn't all rusted to hell just replacing the boot should only take 10-15 minutes.