I'm replacing my inner tie rods, and I'm a little sketchy on one thing...

The FSM says to place the rack shaft in a vise, using the flat section with teeth to prevent the shaft from turning while you're torquing away at the tie rods to loosen/tighten them. Of course, I'm doing this with the rack installed in the car.

I was going to try supporting the shaft with some vise grips, but there just isn't a flat section that I can use. On the driver's side, there's the section with teeth, but I fear damaging the teeth with the vise grips. On the passenger side, there's no flat sections at all - the shaft is entirely round on that end, regardless of how far you extend the shaft. To top it off, I don't have a helper on this one.

So can the rack/housing take the force? I know the FSM says to secure it, and that would be ideal, but in practice, has anybody done this without securing it? Any problems resulted?

 

When I replaced the inners on mine I "unlocked" the washers and then used a plain wrench on the tie rod end. I didn't support the rack in any manner.

Mine broke loose without a lot of effort. When I installed the new ones I merely tightened them firmly with the same wrench and hammered the washers back over. That was (at least?) a couple years ago and I haven't seen or felt any problems. I did remove the boots and inspect them sometime within the past 6 months or so and everything was still tight.

 

ive done several sets like damon said except i used an inner tie rod tool and a 1/2 inch breaker bar

 

Thanks guys, I appreciate the info.

I just did the same as you guys, and didn't support the rack. I removed the old rods with a big adjustable wrench (long story). One wasn't hard to get off, but I had to use my foot on the other one. If anything I did were to damage something in the rack gear, this would have been it!

At first, I tried tightening the new rods with the adjustable wrench, but the flats on the wrench were a little too wide - they bound up the washer, which twisted the tabs right off as I torqued it down. Plus, I didn't feel like I was getting 60lb-ft with this 10" long adj wrench.

So I went out and bought one of those inner tie rod tools. WOW! SOOO much easier with that thing! No problems with the flats being too wide, and it allowed me to use my torque wrench. Not to mention that it got me out from under the car for a few minutes.

I talked to a mechanic at a local dealership (the only dealer I know of that actually knows FDs), and he suggested not using so much torque, but using threadlocker. I ended up at about 40lb-ft with some loctite.