While cleaning and detailing the front suspension and steering on my '86 SVO for the upcoming show season, I found that I needed to replace one of my tie rod boots due to damage (while removing the LCA
). What I found is that there is a difference between the NOS boot currently available from Ford vs. the oem piece.
The Ford part number is listed as E69Z-3332-A. I actually have two different versions of the Ford service part, one is dated 2002, while the second is dated 2010.
In the first picture you can see the part installed on Daniel Carpenter's low mileage '86 SVO.
In the second picture I have placed the various versions side by side to show the difference in how the end of the boot is molded between the three versions. The 2002 version is closer to the oem.
The third picture shows the difference in the style of clamp used on each end. The original uses a zinc dichromate finished wire clamp on the steering gear end and a small "bronze" finish band clamp on the tie rod end. The service replacements both utilize band clamps with the small clamp differing in shape, size and finish.
The last picture you can see that there is an E3 Engineering part number molded into the rubber. The 2002 version has a F78C part number molded into the rubber while the 2010 version has a number VP578C part number molded into the rubber.
Another interesting detail as I continue to improve my car.
Thanks to Kendal Coker for providing me a nice, oem replacement for my project!
