To Add Grease Or Not
 

I was going to replace my aging upper ball joints on my 126 with Uro parts. I had to remove the boot and discovered that there wasn't much grease under the boot. My question is whether I should add some grease or not. I've heard of some folks adding grease to lower ball joints when replacing them.

Probably I will get flamed for this!!
When I got my old 300D (see below), it had about 10,000 miles on it. I went over every possible joint that had grease in it or could have grease put in it, especially anything that appeared to be "sealed for life" and put moly grease in them. At 800k miles, much on bad roads, none of the steering/ball joints had failed. I now always do this when replacing things.

Why should you get flamed for that?

The Boot comes of so there is no negative issue to adding Grease.

And, since you can buy the Boots separately one would assume that if you change the Boots you would be expected to add Grease.

Grease should be compatible with the boot. Some greases may deteriorate it.

Diesel911,

Where do U buy boots separately? I went into dealer for new ones and parts guy tried to sell complete ball joint to me. He said boots were not available separately.

I grease ball joints and tie rod ends with a hypodermic type device with a zerk fitting on the end (available at AutoZone) every 25,000 miles and have never had to replace any joints on a 300,000 mile 300SD.

P E H

I bought tie rod end boots from Phil [now retired] for my 123, maybe they have other boots available.

Keep an eye on the URO boots. I was looking into URO parts, but passed based on some people experiences.

I think that is what is known as "upselling." I have personally obtained new ball joint grease boots from a MB dealer. But it wasn't recently.

911,
The car was still under warranty and moly grease is not the recommended MB product.

I got upper ball joint boots from my dealer two days ago. They have them, but they may have to order them from the NJ or FL parts depots.

I plan to keep an eye on the Uro boots. I once had all four tie rod boots fail at one time and they were TRW (I did not add any grease here - it was all TRW grease).

Evidently it worked. Any, Grease is better than a dry Joint.