Mini Driveshaft Boot Replacement – Doing it the hard way…

Unsurprisingly, more stuff is broken on my now almost 16 year old BMW Mini (Cooper 1.6 manual R50 from 2006), so it’s time to fix it. Today it’s the passenger side inner driveshaft boot, and while it’s a very cheap piece of rubber… it’s real though to get changed.

To do it properly, you should remove the 18mm nut on the lower ball joint and break the taper, then remove what I think is a 17mm nut on the tie rod end and break that taper too (I say think because mine have rusted so badly I couldn’t say for sure), then wrench off the driveshaft nut, push the shaft out of the knuckle, cut the seal on the old drive boot and remove the shaft. Clean the old grease off, unclip the circlip then hammer the bearing carrier off the splined shaft. Pull the old boot off, clean everything well, then slide the new boot on, tighten the new clamp, use a socket to tap the bearing carrier back on then reattach the circlip, coat everything in grease, slip the shaft back into the cup and secure the boot over the cup and attach the clamp, then you can put everything back together.

I did it the hard way though, and without many “special tools”….