Tie Rod Replacement Cost?

[JG2020]

Welp, I still have my truck ha ha. Every time I take it for a drive I think " I can't sell this truck"

I am going to attempt to drive it to my house where I have a garage it can stay in and I can work on it in a better environment than outdoors in the winter. It's about a 300 mile trip.

My front end wanders a bit over bumps and my tie rod end bushings look a little beat.

I got a quote from a local garage for the tie rod ends and alignment. $600??? Seems like a lot.

Might just drive it as is. I can post some pics later to see if anyone has a more educated opinion.

Hope everyone is doing well out there!

Josh

[85lebaront2]

Replacing the tie rod ends is a bit interesting, the outers are pretty straight forward, inners are essentially the bulk of the tie rod. They are not impossible to do by yourself with a separation tool and if you carefully measure the length and count the number of turns to remove the ends it will be close.

Alignment, if you have a ball joint front end there are offset bushings for setting caster and camber within a moderate range, if you have the kingpin front end as I do, the only way to set caster and camber is by bending the beams. Most shops will not touch these as a result, however, if you have a shop that will and they do it right, the alignment will hold up extremely well. Darth last had a full alignment in 1994, my front tires wear completely evenly across.

[ratdude747]

Part of the estimate may also be predicting seized tie rod adjusters... took a couple tries to get mine aligned due to it seizing on the rack (I freed them up with liquid wrench and a pry bar and returned the following week).

Honestly for the work involved, it may be worth doing all 4 tie rod segments... align once, cry once. I didn't follow my own advice through and only half my joints are recent (one outer, one inner, opposite sides); there isn't a hard/fast rule.

Not that this is good practice, but if memory serves I didn't even jack my truck when I did the tie rods... just set the parking brake, popped out the old, popped in the new.

[Gsmblue]

This is on my list. I am going to do the same thing and replace everything and then go for an alignment