I recently noticed the steering bellows/boots on my car are torn, so I'm replacing the inner tie rods, outer tie rods, and the boots as well. It looks like the passenger side boot has allowed some grit and debris onto the shaft that goes into the steering rack. The steering felt fine but I'd like to clean off the debris and reapply whatever oil or grease was on there. The factory service manual is pretty vague, it says to 'apply grease to the inner bore of the boot' but doesn't specify what type of grease. Does anyone have suggestions for which type of grease should be used?

 

The power steering fluid lubricates the rack internals.

The rack end balljoints (inner tie-rods) should come pre-greased. Any grease on the inside of the boots would just be for ease of assembly, and maybe to create a sticky place to trap dust before it goes into the rack end ball joint or rack itself. I'd just go with whatever rubber safe grease you have knocking around.

 

The driver side of the rack (with the teeth) appears to be greased. The boot from this side was in better shape, but did have a few small tears in it:

Driver side of steering rack (inner tie rod and boot removed)



The passenger side doesn't appear to be greased. The boot on this side was in very bad shape, it had a few large tears and some small pieces had fallen off. I don't see much debris on the shaft, but if it's safe I would like to wipe it clean and reapply a thin layer of oil or grease if that's appropriate.



Passenger (Right) side of steering shaft, with boot removed and inner tie rod attached.

 

The factory service manual drawings aren't scaled perfectly, but I edited them to move the tie rods and rack all in the same plane. It looks to me like the power steering fluid will never touch the driver (left) part of the rack/shaft that has teeth and grease, but the right (passenger) side of the rack probably sees power steering fluid when the steering wheel is turned all the way to the left.