poor quality rubber

[outdoorjoe]

i bought a new rubber for the spitfire top ball joint at the mot about a month ago, looked at it last night and its begun to perish already tiny little splits in it! cant beleive it WTF!

why is rubber so poor these days and is there anything can be done to prevent this ie smear it with grease?

[JPB]

Was this from Rimmers by any chance? I've had a pair from them that went the same way but have encountered similarly poorly-kept (dried out) old stock ones from Canley Classics and other suppliers as well. Short of soaking old stock ones in glycerine for a good few months, which isn't guaranteed to be effective in all cases anyway, there's nothing you can do to bring back the flexibility to most types of rubber when they're past it.

Amsteer may be the solution. They actually make these things so, instead of buying stuff that's dried out and looks great until it's called upon to flex a bit in use, you get split new gaiters when you buy from them. They're not even that expensive and they do complete joints too, including some hard to find ones for L/H threaded applications such as Reliant Rebel/Austin A60 etc. inner track rod ends.

I have no connection with Amsteer other than as a satisfied customer on a number of occasions.

They have a WEBSITE too.

[TerryG]

The bushes that came in my new britpart steering damper were showing signs of cracking and breaking up after a month. Which reminds me I need to replace them this weekend.

[outdoorjoe]

It was from Moss Europe but sure the story could be similar as in sat on a shelf for years.

glad to hear im not the only one and ill have a look at buying direct for the next one for sure.

Id say buy cheap buy twice but in this cas its buy old buy twice!

[suffolkpete]

It seems to be a general problem, I've had driveshaft boots and steering rack gaiters on my Matra fail after a short time and I don't have much choice of suppliers.

[Landy Mann]

The bushes that came in my new britpart steering damper were showing signs of cracking and breaking up after a month. Which reminds me I need to replace them this weekend.

That sort of thing is a common britpart complaint, although quite a few of my seals are britpart and have been OK so far, I've just fitted a britpart stub axle with allmakes bearings, so we'll see how that lasts...