Replacing a Tie rod end

[cass3958]

Doing my annual check over the car last week I noticed a little movement in the steering and found that the right hand side Tie Rod end had some play. Went on the SNG web site and found you can buy the whole tie rod C29094 for £78 or the Tie rod pin and bush assembly part number 133101 for just £9.56. There is a massive difference in price but buying the Tie rod pin and bush involves having to press the old pin out and back in which means the car would be off the road for a longer length of time. I don’t have a press so I would have to pay someone to do it for me with added expense so I chose to get the whole assembly. I might buy a tie rod pin for £9.56 and refurbish the one I remove in my own time as a spare. (By the way the left hand side is not available according to SNG but I do have an old left side tie rod end so might do both at the same time.)
The new Tie rod end arrived by overnight postage which I have to commend SNG for, and yesterday as the weather was sunny and warm I decided to get the job done.
To remove the Tie rod you have to undo the locking ring on the centre bar. Then remove the nut on the bottom of the Tie rod pin and the second nut on the steering arm. On the steering arm I was able to get a ball joint splitter under the rubber gaiter and it came off easily. Trying to split the Tie rod pin from the steering box pivot arm is a different matter. There is no gap between the two parts to get the splitter in as can be seen on this photo of the tie rod on the car. The yellow arrow indicates where the tie rod and steering box pivot arm are so close together.

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This second photo shows my spare steering arm left side. The blue arrow is the Tie rod end housing. The yellow arrow indicates the lack of gap to get the splitter in between the tie rod housing and the steering pivot arm. The green arrow is the bottom of the Tie rod pin.

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I tried using the old two hammers trick but there was not enough room to swing a hammer. I tried using a wedge splitter between the two parts but again there was no room for the wedge to even start. I contemplated taking the steering box pivot arm off the bottom of the steering box then having a go at it in a vice on the work bench but the bottom of the steering box pivot arm is too close to the front subframe cross member to again get a splitter in place. I was stumped for a bit until I realised that the Tie rod pin had no rubber gaiter to burn and that I was replacing the pin anyway so out came the blow torch. Having heated the steering box pivot arm up for a couple of minutes the slightest of taps with the hammer on the end of the pin and the two parted ways.

After they had cooled down I then unscrewed the Tie rod assembly from the steering centre bar counting the number of turns as it came out. With the new Tie rod I reversed the procedure with the same number of turns. A bit of copper grease on the pins and I reassemble all the parts and job done. Apart from the balls ache of trying to split the tie rod from the steering box pivot arm for an hour the job should have taken me half an hour to complete.

Although I counted the threads when removing the Tie rod from the steering centre bar and reversed this when reassembling the car is going to have its tracking tested next week. It is good to drive a short distance but any slight change in the geometry could potentially ruin your tyres so always best to get the tracking done.

[Glyn Ruck]

A question Rob. All my stuff is new at present so I have no issues to resolve.

But I shall be helping a friend shortly that wants to break a good joint. Pickle forks always damage the gaiters. Fitting a new gaiter to a good joint is easy enough.

Do you think that this splitter that I have will break the joint without damaging the gaiter or should we make sure we have a spare gaiter & retainer spring?

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[cass3958]

That splitter would do fine to break the ball joints that have rubber covers or gaiters you just have to lift the gaiter up to slide the "U" shape between the joint. Unfortunately that splitter will not get between the tie rod joint as there is no gap for the "U" shape on the splitter to get into. I did not damage my rubber gaiter but as a precaution I would buy a spare for a couple of shekels and have it on stand by. You know what these joints are like if they have not been broken before. Locked solid.
The other thing you might have a problem with is as the ball joint wears down and you have a lot of movement, when you try and remove the nut from the ball joint, the whole thing starts to rotate and you cannot turn the nut off without the ball rotating as well. What I had handy was a 1mm cutting disc on an angle grinder and I was able to cut a screw driver slot in the threaded section so I could hold this still with a flat bladed screw driver whilst turning the nut with a spanner.

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[Glyn Ruck]

Thanks! I'll get him to order some spare gaiter's from Barratt's. Can't get them here.