I did a bunch of maintenance on my 05 Civic last fall. One of the items I did was replace both of the outer tie rods before an alignment and new tires. However, I was bleeding the brakes the other day and noticed that both outer boots are cracked completely around. It's only been 6 months!

I used Moog parts from Advanced Auto Parts and of course the originals lasted 5 years. There doesn't seem to be any play or damage to the actual joint (yet), just the boots.

My question and concern is that there may be something else wrong which caused both boots to fail again in such a short time. The old boots were in better condition than these are now...they were just a bit cracked whereas these appear to be cracked all the way around.

Did I just get a bad batch from Moog? Could the alignment have broken them or caused a failure in such a short time? When the alignment was done I had them replace the timing belt too (I didn't have the time). I don't recall needing to mess with the tie rods to do so, but...

 

Just a thaught, maybe they were over torqued? I'm sure you can get free new ones and replace them. Torque to specs & dont forget the new cotter pin.