Har har har, glad I asked.  I guess I'll store it next to my Flux Capacitor when I'm done with it 

Haha! Sounds like a great place to store it.

Seriously though, I have no idea. Seems like a lot of cost to put those on the ball joint just for shipping protection, but I don't have any other great ideas. Did you buy parts for the T/C rods? Reason I ask is there's a rubber protective bootie that comes with some of the upgrade kits:

 

PS - Is it just me, or does the guy in that encabulator video look like Dickless from Ghostbusters? You know... Professor Jerry Hathaway.

4 hours ago, Captain Obvious said:

Seems like a lot of cost to put those on the ball joint just for shipping protection

I did some sub assembly line work for Honda a number of years ago and there would be steel bins three feet deep of ball joint assemblies all piled on top of one another as the robot assemblers spit them out, the rubber boots were protected by a cap that sort of looked like the OP's.  Once the sub assembly was finished the last guy who did the QC would pull the caps off and they would back to be used again.

That's all I have to go on.

Thanks, I get it now. That makes a lot of sense. It was never supposed to be seen by the customer. I think the original suggestion included the belief that it was supposed to be shipped like that, but you're saying it was an internal protective fixture only. That's quite plausible.

It looks like an Elizabethan collar for a side hill gouger.  Must have got mixed up with the off-road hill climbing Nismo suspension parts.

Thanks for the Rockwell video!