Outer tie rod ends

[hcmclean]

Anyone have an easy way to remove the outer tie rod ends, mine are locked up tight on my 82GT. I have tried just about everything I can think of.

[homer302]

I have not heard of that one. I have replaced many of those but thankfully they were all on rust-free southern cars. Does the jam nut even come loose or are all the threads just rusted in oblivion? Heat I would suspect would be the only answer. Maybe you could get the inners to come loose and just replace the inners and outers both. That would work if the boots have protected the threads on the inners.

[hcmclean]

Jam nut wont move at all. From what I can see the threads don't appear to be rusted, I just cant get it to move. I thought about replacing both the inner and outer, that may be what I have to do.

[bluemax]

Are they still attached to the spindle?

When I was restoring my steering rack, I could not get the outer tie rods off on my work bench. Remounted the rack, put the ball joint studs back in the spindle (just hand tight on the nut), and then was able to remove the jam nut without any problem.

[hcmclean]

I'll give that a try, thanks.

[mb757]

Heat from a torch is your friend when brute force doesn't do the trick.

[gr79]

Removing outer tie rod ends from rack:
Penetrating spray and two big pipe wrenches.
One to hold and later remove tie rod
Other to first back off jam nut then hold rack tie rod from turning.
Making sure of which way the treads run of course.

Have stood on both wrench handles to break things loose.
This is best done off car, rack on ground.

Mark or count turns and remove.
Dab some anti-seize into threads for next time.
Air hammer with pickle fork attachment for removing spindle end of tie rod.

Or take it in and pay someone to do it.

[hcmclean]

Broke down and bought some inner tie rods, I had to change one of the boots out anyway.

[vintageracer]

Probably a good idea to buy the inner tie rods anyway.

My experience with Foxbody cars is the first tie rod to go bad is always the right inner tie rod anyway!

[erratic50]

Was going to suggest heating the jam nut from the bottom with a lighter then touching it from the top with a wax candlestick. Crazy how well this trick actually works as wax behaves just like solder in a sweat joint except that it lubricates very effectively.

I tried it once and now I keep a candle stick and lighter in my tool box. I reach for it before screwing with penetrating oils simply because it works 100x better.

seeing is believing so don't take my word for it.

the other thing I will say about a tierod is 1/2 the time you have to use a die grinder to cut a groove in the tierod simply to give the crap somewhere to go. Then spin the jam nut off and replace the entire tierod.

I got midevil with mine before I knew the candle trick. Nobody had the jam nuts so when everything fought me I cut off the tierods, spun off the jam nuts with an impact, and replaced the entire blasted rack.... along with both outers moving to a MM sn95 to fox bump steer kit.

not the cheap way but it worked out great. Cheaper than therapy.