MercFiveHundred

Has anyone replaced their inner tie rods? Do i need the special tool or can i just use a wrench? Thanks for any insight.

Nickthegreek

never done it but you do need special tools which i believe harborfreight tools carries

tarheel76

I had both left and right tie rods replaced on my 2004 by my indy shop. At the same time I had the drive side lower ball joint replaced. There was 55k miles on at that time .The total shop labor was 3hrs which included time on the alignment rack. Keep in mind you should have it realigned which is all four wheels. I was thinking of doing it myself however I didn't want to invest in tools I may not use again. I think Auto Zone will rent tools???

tarheel76

MercFiveHundred

Thanks guys. Yea i found out Autozone rents the tool on their website. The the universal tool shows SAE sizes so i hope they'll work. Once i get the part in, i'll bring it in to AZ to see if it'll work. I think the biggest problem i'll have is removing the boot since i think it's farther in than i can reach. I'll post my findings.

MercFiveHundred

Update: The inner tie rods are pretty easy. Jack up the car and remove the under car protector/covers. There you can see the whole p/s rack and you have easy access to the boots. I used the regular "ball joint separator" to separate the outer tie rod end from the spindle - the "tie rod separator" was too small. The inner tie rod tool from Autozone was too small - even the larger adapter was small too. If you have a huge adjustable wrench, that would work great. I used a plumbers monkey wrench which did the job, but not as easy because you had to get it just right to stop it from slipping. Try and count the revolutions to unwind the inner and outer tie rod from each other to make things easier for alignment.

MercFiveHundred

So after all my work, i still got that weird clunking noise going over small bumps and uneven road surface. Even better i took a semi-hard right turn on Monday and now my right tire is pulling to the right. My left tire seems straight when my steering wheel is straight but the right is offset to the right. I was going to get alignment anyways, but this threw me off because i've never had alignment go on a semi-hard turn. My "ESP MALFUNCTION" message comes on too. I got the codes:

C11BA Check component N49 (Steering angle sensor)
C14B7 System faults: Steering angle senor not initialized

Is this because the ESP is reading the alignment is way off and that it cannot calculate the correct steering angle - leading to turning the ESP off?

W Cole

Yes, I had the same problem. Get it aligned, turn it lock to lock a few times and it should be fine. My alignment was WAY off after I installed the new tie rod even though I was very careful to mark the placement of the old one. I *think* the newer tie rods are either longer or shorter (I forget) than the old ones. If not, then I have no idea how I got the alignment so far off.

Also to do the tie rods try using a standard instead of metric wrench. I didn't have a big enough metric one but my standard box wrenches went larger.