Well Veeky Forums, how fucked am I? Evidently I’ve been driving with this for some time now

Busted sway bar end link, not a huge deal and won't hurt anything as long as you're not driving the car hard.

You are a fucking idiot if you actually tried to drive with a tie rod disconnected.

any input on what the other guy said about the CV boot and tranny leakage?

my sway bar was disconnected like that for a few months but once you get it fixed you'll noticed a lot less body roll in the turns

boot is ripped so the CV will fail eventually as water and dirt get into it.

Thanks. I’ve had it like this for maybe a couple months, I’m so broke that I’m stalling getting it fixed.

it's one of those things that could go years before becoming an issue or it could completely fuck up in a few months. i have an ATV that had a CV boot clamp fall off in the mud. boot got packed full of mud and rocks but i just put a hose clamp on as a temporary fix. ended up forgetting about it and now 4 years later it's still going strong. on the other hand i ripped one on my truck a week after buying it(new) and 3 weeks later the CV was fucked

the boots aren't very expensive and aren't hard to replace but can be time consuming

Was there a flashpoint moment when it ceased working? Or did you just decide to fix it the second time around when you noticed it?

If you're just now becoming interested in cars, sway bar links are a perfect project for a beginner. Super easy, if you live in tbe rust belt youll probably need a torch. Other than that its pretty straight forward, theres likely only 2 bolts holding it on

Update:
I took a look at the CV boot. It isn't torn anywhere, but it is still ejecting grease from somewhere.
I popped the sway bar back into place, drove around for a bit. It fell back off again, so I'll repair that.
Car is having low idle issues again, at this point I'm considering alternatives.

The cv boot clamp is probably letting grease get by, if you're just going to drive the car into the ground I wouldn't worry about it or the sway bar link, but I Would disconnect the link and remove it entirely so its not swinging around under there. I did that when the link broke on my dads car and he was too cheap to fix it, besides a little extra body roll there is no noticeable difference.

Is the car throwing any engine codes?

If you don't own a scanner it's the best $25 you can spend on amazon.

Every car is legally required to have OBDII

inb4
"P1011 Manufacturer-specific Code"

yeah, just an old stall code that i didn't clear. p1159.

Did you clean off the grease so you can see where it reappears from? Paper towels and simple green make short work of car grease. But if you have some other household cleaner, 409 or whatever, that'll usually be good enough.

If dirt and grit haven't gotten in the CV joint yet, then you can rig a boot cover on it, maybe stuff some more grease in first, and be on your way. Otherwise it will start clunking sooner or later depending on how much you drive it, if you get winter road salt in there, etc.

>yeah, just an old stall code that i didn't clear
>i didn't clear
>Car is having low idle issues again

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

I did clean off the grease, I took it for a spin and it hasn't reappeared.
There is no actual tear so I am not sure how dirt would get it (yet). Fortunately this car only drives within in a 10 mile radius in sunny south Florida.
To put it in perspective: I have had the car for a year and only accrued 3,000 miles on it. I think I am going to rig a boot cover on it.

Change spark plugs leads or coil packs and get good quality spark plugs. And the recommended gas. If running bad still clean the maf sensor

yeah, it's a dumb idea and there are cars i wouldn't do this on but since my car has a tension strut i thought it wouldn't sustain any damage. been under it dosens of time and there's no sign of damage

seems like the mechanic that installed the CV boot decided to jam pack it with grease to be on the safe side. the extra grease just gets blasted out 99%. also, tranny fluid isn't that thick

*the extra grease just gets blasted out 99% of the time unless you have shitty china rubber that tears or he didn't tighten it well enough.

thats just a ballsocket, take a pair of vicegrips and pinch it back together, it should pop back into the socket.

Your mom's face is a ballsocket.

Your CV-joint boot is fucked, if you change it now, you might save your CV-joint.

>have to take cv axle out to properly replace boot
>cv axles are so cheap
>not just replacing the axle when it busts

Sir is correct. Unless you're sure the boot is problematic and you're going to clap a boot cover around it, just wait until that bastard starts clunking too much and then toss a whole new axle in.

I drive my jeep on 37s without sway bars all the time. now thats scary.

I went ahead and cleaned that off, still hasn’t splattered on. Just stalling the inevitable for now.

The cage around the balls ended up snapping. Dealer managed to push it through as a warranty claim so not really a big deal but was a hassle. Have yet to touch the one on the ATV but I should probably take a look at it. The boot is still good but all that mud and small stones stuck in there have likely fucked it up pretty good although it hasn’t failed yet

Code reader is one of the best tools I’ve ever bought. The day I bought the thing it saved me $600. Issue was just a dirty valve for the evaporation system which is apparently pretty common. Fix was taking the valve off and blowing it out with an air compressor. Dealer would have just changed the valve which costs $600 plus whatever labour

recommend me a decent one that can read live data and isnt $100+