Bosch 00644646 Clamp OEM Part

I saw a tube video of a guy that replaces the boot without taking any of the washer apart. The boot was no problem, I had the old one off and the new one on in 20 minutes... The rear wire/spring clamp I found impossible to do. the spring is so hard to stretch. I tried till both of my thumbs were bleeding from the pressure. So I took off the top control panel, had access to the top of where the boot clamp groove is. I took one end of the wire off the spring, lubed it up with dish soap, put it around the bottom and sides and stretched the spring enough holding the end of the spring with one side of small needle nose pliers and vice grips on the wire part. It literally took all my strength to stretch that spring about an inch and a half to connect to the wire. Rear clamp done. The front wire clamp was just as hard, so I took the old rear clamp which was longer and made a new front wire clamp that I only had to stretch the spring about an inch. Bosch has those springs ridiculously tight.

We unhooked the spring and wrapped the clamp around it and used pliers to pull the spring back on. We could not get the clamp to stretch over it, it kept coming off in different places.

Imagine trying to change a bicycle tire if the rim of the wheel were flexible, and falls off, and that will give you an idea what a pain in the neck this job is. You need either a friendly octopus to help you, or lots of clamps, so that once you've seated the clamp in the top part of the seal, you can apply lateral pressure to stop it pulling out (and bringing the seal with it), when you apply force to stretch the spring over the bottom part. You can fit about 2/3 of the circumference without difficulty, and secure it with three or four clamps, then push the spring down with your hand, and use a screw driver like a tire lever to pop the clamp over the rim of the seal and into the groove.

I ordered the parts, watched a video of how to do it, I saw it was kind of difficult, and having no experience in these kind of fixings, I called a friend to help with the difficult part, which is mainly the big clamp and the small clamp, that made my job really easy, and the results were perfect, the parts worked well. I didn't know the boot came with the two clamps, and I've ordered the clamps separately, so now I'm going to have to returned them. That was my only inconvenience.

The inside spring clamp was not too difficult to get on. The outside one was more difficult. I finally read the instructions, and while that method was definitely better, it still needed a third hand to hold and stretch the spring. I definitely recommend a second person to help with that outside spring.