Perished boots

[gagvanman]

Doing some work on my bay yesterday, checking stuff out under the front end and found both rubber boots on the new tie rod bought from JK and fitted last October are both perished and split. Only done 400 miles since then!
Inner ball joint, but both are like this:

 

[gagvanman]

Emailed JK with photos, they are sending some replacement boots.

Great service, thank you...

 

[gagvanman]

I take back what I said about the great service from JK, no boots yet, been 2 weeks...

 

[georgeyv]

I've had this exact problem with that exact tie rod. Ordered replacements from VWH at £10 and hopefully will last longer than a year. Dreadful quality.

 

[Clem]

Its not just a VW thing, its common across the industry. Price points being squeezed and car lives not expected to be long mean that pattern consumables are pretty poor.