[jakeru]

You actually can grease your ball joints and tie rod ends, (I did when I rebuilt the >100k suspension on my 2001), but it's not as simple as injecting grease into a zerk fitting. To avoid damaging the rubber boot, you'll need to disconnect the wheel bearing housing/steering knuckle from the ball joint, remove the c-clip around the end of the rubber boot, then use something like a toothpick to insert dabs of grease down inside the boot, before reinstalling. (I'd recommend rotating the joint 90 degrees when doing this also, to vary which surfaces of the joint are encountering the loads.)

I've also heard of some people piercing the rubber boot and spraying a lubricant through the pierced boot - and this could be done without disconnecting the wheel bearing housing. But with the pierced boot, however, this may be a very temporary fix.