How to: Replace inner tie rods (Ford)

going to be doing a video replacing the inner tie rods today um i did one years ago replacing the outer rods which is a bit easier today we'll be looking at the inner ones and the ball joint getting it off the steering rack and i'll be showing it to you off the car because the reason i'm doing this is i had to replace the entire steering rack on my car um which will make it a little bit different to all the other videos that you'll find out there which show this job being done in situ which will make it a little bit easier to see what's going on because mostly when you look at this with it all on the car you're just sort of looking in from the wheel arch and everything is very much sort of in the depths tie rods fail at their ball joints which will end up slack and with play in them which may result in a car failing its inspection if it's bad you can even feel the steering while driving tends to feel loose and it drifts around typically you narrow down the steering components by lifting the front wheels off the ground and trying to rock the wheel horizontally like this and if you take off the wheel or you get a good look from underneath you can start to narrow it down between the outer and the inner rods or the rack itself now i did a video on checking tie rods so check that out if you need to if there's nothing obviously wrong with the outer rods which you can very easily see then you'll have to be focusing further in and here you can see that the inner rod is the one that's moving with the the play and by the way on my right hand drive car this is the right hand side with the play whereas there is none on the left hand side and that's actually a sign that it's more likely the rack no not the rods because it's the steering wheel side that tends to present wear on the gear whereas if if the rods are failing if one is gone then you know quite commonly the other one will have two so you should look at both sides but you won't really know for certain until you look you know more closely now to do that you'll need to get a look at the inner ball joints and also be able to articulate the rod around so the outer rod will need disconnecting from the wheel hub to get this in more detail see my video on the outer rods specifically but it's a simple enough process you can get the overview here you release the locking nut before anything else while it's easier to brace the flats flats on the rod i'm using a crow's foot attachment here with a breaker bar because it's attachable to a torque wrench later for tightening but also because it's less likely to do any rounding damage to the nut if it's on really tight then undo the nut on the uh outer rod ball joint spindle um helpful to have a deep socket for this otherwise you'll have to use a spanner uh turn it down until it's flush with the threaded rod end but then leave it to help absorb the hammer blues smack it hard until the taper fit pops out of the steering knuckle and then you might need the little hex key to hold the ball from spinning as you undo the nut the rest of the way and the rod will come free of the knuckle now right away you might get an idea as to the inner rod condition if it's completely loose and floppy much as this one is that's a clue that the inner ball joint is worn it should be a bit stiff ideally uh but at least you know smooth and moving with a bit of resistance in my case this uh definitely wants replacing um even though my main issue was actually with the rack when you remove the outer rod uh if you're replacing everything with the same hardware then count the turns taken to unthread it so that you can put them back on as closely as possible and i noted that along with the right or left-hand side on these because i was reusing them okay so now to look at the inner ball joint um if you're working on the car then this is the view you're restricted to and you've got to work in that space to get the boot off and to get tools in in my case however i was taking the whole rack out as i've mentioned so this is my view instead and that locking nut needs to come off obviously because the boot needs to be slid off put it somewhere safe and i suggest that you keep left and right kept track of the boot is held in place with clamps and the smaller one is usually a spring type that's actioned with long nose pliers or vice grips um if you want to reuse the boots um and you know if it's in good condition then you might spray this section with some penetrating oil to try to free it up otherwise you might rip it as it tends to get sort of glued on um and at the inside the larger end uh you need to see if it's still the factory clip like this the metal band um or if somebody's done the job before and has put cable ties back on if it's the metal clamp you need to find its joint and get savage with a flat blade screwdriver just um jam it in there and turn it it'll pop off eventually and you'll do damage to it the clamp won't be reusable so don't worry about that you just use cable ties for the replacement and the small end needs to be worked loose gently again if you want to reuse the boot and once it's loose it just slides off right now you can see the ball joint and uh you can go back and repeat the visual inspection from the start to see where the movement is so if you push and pull on this and you you know as you were doing before with the road wheel and you can see the rod and the ball is moving inside the socket here then you know that tells you what needs replacing doesn't it um if however the ball joint is basically solid and the movement is at the rack bar behind you know you can see the rack bar moving in and out of the rack then bad news because that means the rack is bad and that's what i needed to replace now the next thing is to get the rod unscrewed from the rack and this is a tricky bit i'll say that the the ford workshop manual instructs the rack should be removed from the car as i have done but then the rack bar itself should be held in a vise even though i'm showing this off the car you know most people and workshops are just obviously not pulling out the entire rack just to replace the rods so it's a ridiculous assumption by ford and and the the particular crime in this case is that they don't provide any flats on the end of the rack bar here so as you try to talk on the tie rod you can't provide any counter torque in order to protect the rack so it's a real pain i tried a few things to hold it as i'll show you now but i mean honestly none of them really worked and there are also no flats to work on the bulge on the ball joint body which is what you need to turn but you can at least get a tool for that these tie rod tools are just a sort of u-clamp with serrations on the inside for grip and you just clamp it up using the nuts um with a 3 8 square to to turn it so it goes on like this you'll need to tighten the nuts quite a lot before it will grip properly but um it's quite easy to put it on the first thing i tried uh was holding the rack bar with some vice grips trying different techniques for makeshift drawer protectors to try to stop damaging the bar surface so with that and a breaker bar turning the type the the rod tool that worked and i did get it off however i don't recommend this as with just the the fabric i was using here to try to protect it it wasn't enough and i did end up marking the chrome on the rack bar and if you damage a section of it that needs to um be going inside the seal inside the rack you know it might not end well you're going to end up with leaks coming from the rack so i tried other things like rubber as vice jaw protectors but anything that was hard enough to stop the damage was not enough to hold it and it would just slip um so yeah if you don't actually have a proper bench mounted vise then um you know you're not taking the rack out of the car then you know i i resorted to the same technique that you see in every other real world guide which is to just not worry about it and you simply wrench on the gear and trust nothing breaks internally and you see here i'm using the same vice grips just to hold the rack body using now the bolt mounts on the outside on the body yeah if you're doing this on the car then obviously it's all bolted down so you don't need to um hold anything but you know doing this the uh the rack bar itself is not being supported the way you could do to stop bending the bar is to use grips on the rubber and sorry grips on rubber you know as protectors and just don't worry about them slipping because if you pull equally on the one side as you push the other then even if you're not holding the uh holding it in terms of torque you are nevertheless countering the lateral force um so i just don't think there's a practical way to actually counter the turning moment uh without damaging that bar's ceiling you know chromed surface so it's tricky now check your replacement rod is identical uh if the length is different then that might be okay but the positioning of the outer rod will be different when you thread it back on uh by the way you see this replacement rod is not straight um and i couldn't straighten it by hand i had to hold the socket side with the vice grips and then action it with my foot just to get it straight so you see how stiff the ball joint should be when it's in a good condition uh some vehicles will have a locking pin that inserts in in the thread after installation but ford are just relying on nothing but torque here so i figured some loctite wouldn't hurt thread the new one on and then it's you know just a reversal of the removal process except with a torque wrench if you want to talk it right and i suggest you do because uh too loose is obviously dangerous while too tight risks damaging the rack because of those difficulties in holding the bar the ford spec torque is 110 newton meters which is quite a bit so uh dial that in right and just before continuing uh make sure the new ball joint is clean and has a good amount of grease present in the socket i just cleaned out some gunk here and added a bit of new grease just for the sake of it and then place a bit of a silicone grease or some other rubber safe lubricant around the ceiling surfaces for the boot this just helps it seal up and also install a bit more easily and when putting the boot back in place orient it to suit the breather pipe on the rack and don't forget to plug that back into it you'll need a decent sized cable tie to clamp the rack side i'm working on this from the top but if your rack's on the car then you'll be doing it from the underside most likely vice grips on the spring clamp for the other side um there are obvious sections marked on the rod by the way for the ceiling bit on the boot to sit between once clamped then the the ridges on the rod will keep the boot positioned right even as a concertina is in use so do make sure it's in the right place before you release the clamp and this is the locking nut for the outer rod make sure you put that back on before you go threading on the outer rod um when you put this uh back on remember that the nut that nuts have orientation to them the uh the flatter side of it needs to be facing outwards so that it that's the bit the butts against the outer rod and we're back to the in the car perspective again rack working okay and the boot flexing how it should uh when putting the outer rod back on counting those same number of turns it took to get it off i like to use some anti-seize on the threads to try to ward off corrosion as much as anything these are the bits that are turned and adjusted when you do an alignment so it'll make life easier for those guys too all right so notice here where before the rod was so loose that it would flop down under its own weight now this replacement is stiff enough to support itself in mid-air and in fact it takes a little effort to move it around even so the nut on the outer tie rod spindle is another job for the torque wrench that's 40 newton meters on this one per forward and as to the locking nut on the inner rod it needs to be snugged up the the torque is 45 newton meters but i wouldn't worry too much about that if you're driving straight to an alignment place which you will almost certainly need to to do having done this work because uh having disturbed the inner tie rods the um the toe will not be quite right so get a front end alignment done otherwise that's it so i hope that was helpful have fun out there

Channel: Craig's DIY Car

Views: 72,674

Keywords: car, auto, amateur, mechanic, maintenance, service, work, jobs, diy, ford, mondeo, steering, tie rod, inner tie rod, steering rack, replace, change, install

Id: 9rcXiA8UK-w

Length: 13min 27sec (807 seconds)

Published: Sun May 01 2022