tiger4life

iTrader: (16)

Just did my ball joints and rie rods today, so I post a few tips since a lot of us need to do this maintenance and there isn't a lot of info on the tie rod part.

1. I did it by removing the big nut. Their is an inner rod (from the cv boot), the outer rod and a nut. Some people get the outer off by holding it with an open ended wrench and using another open ended wrench on the inner rod and then turning one of them.

I removed the nut though. Biggest tip is to remove the nut before you remove the other end of the rod from the ball joint. That way it's held in place, otherwise everything will move around when you are trying to remove it. Some don't like to do it because it controls the toe I believe. You can mark the threads but I just counted them. I had 9 exposed threads on each side. I'm getting an alignment anyway. If you are facing into the car or towards the motor, the nut needs to be turned clockwise. It will move inward and take pressure off of the outer tie rod, and then you can freely remove the rod by turning it counterclockwise if you are facing into the car.

2. When putting this all together, I put the tie rod into the ball joint first. I tightened it up with a small rachet, but not up to spec. tight enough so it wouldn't pop out, but room for it to move. Then I placed the control arm onto the ball joint. I lined it up and jacked the control arm up from underneath. This lhelps line up the control arm with the balljoint holes.

3. Use a pitman arm puller. You can rent it for free at Autozone. You just have to leave a deposit.