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How many of you replaced the dust boots on your control arm bushings? What did you use to install the dust boot clip? According to the FSM, it requires the use of SST 49 F034 210 and 49 F034 211.
Any best practices to share? The dust boot clip must be expanded beyond the ability of a set of pliers (or similar) in order to clear the boot & fit into the race. The photos were taken from the FSM, Section R.
Special Tools required for Ball Joint Dust Boot Clip installation.
You could probably do the same thing with an appropriate sized socket. Looks like it's just a round piece of metal to push that clip down over the boot.
I used a large pair of needle nose pliers to create a ramp. Tip of them went around the flange at the bottom of the boot. Ring is around the pliers before opening them up to make the wedge, then slide it down the ramp and the ring opens up. Basically the same thing as the tool, it's just not a completely around the diameter. Takes a couple tries to practice as sometimes half way down it would start slipping sideays off axis, but by the time I did the last one I had it on in 5 seconds.
Thanks so much for all the replies. I used the long needle nose pliers approach and it just kept sliding back up the tool. I'll try your method again when I install the other dust boot clips.
The method that worked for me was using needle nose pliers to expand the clip around a 34mm socket. Then I placed the socket over the ball joint and slid the clip down into the channel. It was a PITA though.
