As per title, are cable ties legal for keeping CV boots in their place on the drive shafts?
thanks
James

Yes

I would have said no ?

Edit to add: Or more to the point bad practice, I've had an MOT inspector pull me up on it.

[Edited on 8/11/09 by fesycresy]

passed my SVA with them.

And both the cars i've built passed sva too with no comments from the testers

Yes. Passed plenty of MOTs with them. Never can get the little metal rings to work properly....

Yes... but there are better clips available. For MOT they just have to be secure.

Many replacement boots are supplied with just nylon zip-ties. They'll work ok on rubber boots, but not on the plastic ones that are now being used by some manufactuers (Renault, GM, etc). For those we've found jubilee clips are the only thing that will secure them once the original clip has broken.

adrian

in my experience cable ties are not up to
the job.

Me and the local garage had a falling out over
their use.

s

I agree, they will got through an MOT, and garages do use them for the job. However while it doesnt no work, ive never liked it. Expensive mistake if it fails and goes unnoticed.


Daniel

You really need the type with a metal insert [rather than plastic] to lock the cable tie as they are much stronger.

Stu

We've got a set of universal fit boots in a kit that I was pretty sceptical of but have tuned out to be excellent. They use a stainless steel strip that you tighten with a tool that pulls them tight with a winch effect & gets them properly tight. I'm sure you must be able to buy the strips somewhere on they're own.
Cable ties do work fine on some boots but are useless on others, as said the plastic type of boot which is now common-place.

Cable ties are fine but the have to be fitted properly --- clean the areas where the where the rubber and metal contact and don't use cable ties that are too wide.

Good quality cable ties are incredibly reliable and shouldnt be fround at as an efficient fastner for any semi permant use. With CV boots alot relys on the boot and CV having a lip/rib to allow the fastner to 'lock' them together. I had a CV boot a while back that didnt have a rib so the only choice was a jubille clip. However these have a problem in themselves, the large metal screw causes an imbalance, which is not ideal. A possible solution is to use 2 clips and have each screw at 180 degrees of each other. My Dad even does that with cable ties to keep them balanced!