Tie Rod End replacement

[JonM934]

The boots on my tie rod ends were completely falling apart and even though the Tie Rod Ends were tight, I thought I should replace the whole thing. So I set out to replace all 4 tie rod ends. I found out quickly that the ones listed in the parts list, the commercial equivalents were not exactly the correct parts. Here are two that crossed to the civilian number.



They are too long in both directions. I mean these are threaded in two places and both of the threaded parts are too long for a good fit on our trucks.



I had a lot of trouble trying to loosen these to get them out. For a couple of weeks, I sprayed about a gallon of Liquid Wrench in these parts trying to get them to free up.



After I got the nut and the rod to turn, then I needed to break the part free from the truck. I tried everything and finally used two axle separators to break it apart. Note how the two tools are stacked on one another so I can get enough height to force it apart.

I tried to upload a photo but it did not work.

 

[JonM934]

So the photo I was uploading was from my new phone and it was 100mp. I guess that is too big to be uploaded. So here is a smaller version showing the tools I used.



I thought about replacing just the boots, they are available from the military and I found one on eBay.



Here is the boot itself. The ridges on the boot fit into valleys on the Tie Rod End and then the two round springs go on to keep the boot in place.



I am glad that I did not replace just the boots because I destroyed a couple of the Tie Rod Ends getting them out.

In the end, I had to get the actual military Tie Rod Ends on eBay to get then to fit on the truck properly.