Axle boots tore prematurely? I replaced both inner/outer boots last summer

[nando]

those are the ones I have too. Somebody told me they aren't the same as the ones you get from BMW. they're certainly much cheaper. maybe I'll try the BMW part for the one that I keep breaking, and use the cheap ones everywhere else.

[audiquattrot]

Is the car lowered a significant amount? Where they BMW parts or cheap boots? I have done boots on previous cars to have them fail after 8 months or so. My problem was cheap boots.

I've heard there are cheap aftermarket boots that do not last very long. they are hard/plasticky, apparently.

the only boot that's ever given me problems while being lowered is the passenger inner boot, because it's so close to my headers. it's been fine since I got them ceramic coated but I still want to make some sort of heat shield.

I've never had a drivers side boot fail, except for the original 140k mile inner ones right after I dropped the car on H&Rs. It failed within 20 miles, lol.

I used GKN Loebro ones which i thought were the same manufacturer as OEM? The car is on H&R sport springs + bilstein HD shocks. Its not that low at all. I'll look into the OEM BMW ones.

[nando]

I've heard there are cheap aftermarket boots that do not last very long. they are hard/plasticky, apparently.

the only boot that's ever given me problems while being lowered is the passenger inner boot, because it's so close to my headers. it's been fine since I got them ceramic coated but I still want to make some sort of heat shield.

I've never had a drivers side boot fail, except for the original 140k mile inner ones right after I dropped the car on H&Rs. It failed within 20 miles, lol.

[future rs]

Is the car lowered a significant amount? Where they BMW parts or cheap boots? I have done boots on previous cars to have them fail after 8 months or so. My problem was cheap boots.

[audiquattrot]

and have driven roughly 20K miles since. I put the car on the lift yesterday to take a closer look at why my steering was a little loose and had play, and my friend suspected its the U-joint that has failed. While up on the lift, i noticed both (drivers + pass) side of my inner axle boots have torn + the outer ones look severely dry rotted already. I installed them brand new June/July of 2011.

Is this common to tear this quickly? They don't appear to have torn from anything I had driven over, rather just from the flex of the suspension + maybe premature dryrot?

Not sure if there are other factors internally that can cause premature boot tearing. I wanna make sure before I go thru the hell of replacing these boots again.