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TRQ suspension kits are manufactured using premium raw materials and coatings for extended service life. Each TRQ suspension component is designed to be a direct, maintenance-free replacement to the stock unit. To extend the life of your steering and suspension components, TRQ recommends replacing components in pairs, sets, or kits. All products are fit and road-tested in our Massachusetts R&D facility to ensure we deliver on our promise of Trusted Reliable Quality.
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Install Tip: When replacing steering components, have a professional alignment performed afterwards. This ensures proper tracking and even tire wear.
Our steering and suspension components are pre-greased and sealed for long life and do not require the extra maintenance typically required by greaseable versions.
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WARNING: This product can expose you to chemicals including Lead and Lead Compounds, which are known to the State of California to cause cancer, and birth defects or other reproductive harm. For more information, go to www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.
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Hey friends. It's Len here at 1A Auto. Today we're working on our 1996 Dodge Ram 1500. This is the Laramie with a 5.9. We are going to be replacing the outer tie rod end. It's going to be super easy. I can do it and you can do it too. As always, if you need any parts you can check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.
Okay, friends, so we're underneath the vehicle here. We have our left front outer tie rod end, which is this unit right here. It's approximately this long. Okay? You have your sleeve unit, and then you have this right here that comes all the way across over to here. This would be your left front inner tie rod end. Okay?
A lot of times what happens is this exactly what this one looks like. You get a lot of rust and corrosion inside here. This should be where the sleeve is and all these threads right here on your tie rods should be inside here. This whole sleeve is a completely threaded unit and it threads onto this part and right here. When they get rotted and they look like this, the odds that the threads on the tie rods and the threads on the inside of this sleeve being good is just so minimal, because all they're doing is sitting there collecting rust and rot. And when you're dealing with steering and suspension, you want to make sure that you're being as safe as possible and you have as strong material as possible because last thing you want is bad threads on either of these two pieces and this pulling right out.
Okay? Cause you're driving down the road, your wheels are going nice and straight. Next thing you know, there's no threads holding this in except for just the tightness of this, and it just slides right out. And I don't want to think of any worst case scenarios, but I'm sure you can. And to avoid that, what I would recommend in this case is you replace this whole unit. Okay? Left front outer tie rod end, sleeve, and the inner tie rod end all the way down to here. All right? If you're not going to do that and for some reason you want to risk it and, you know, you do you booboo, what you would do, loosen this nut right here all the way to the end or even take it all the way off. Same thing with this one. These will rattle around, digga digga digga, right?
You're going to take some nice big channel lock pliers, whatever you've got, and you're going to turn this, and you're going to turn it and turn it. Keep twisting it until these right here separate all the way out. Okay? At that point you would take your new tie rod end. You start it into the sleeve a little bit. Start the sleeve on this just a teeny bit. Put your tie rod end up inside the knuckle, just kind of nut it for you know, for a couple minutes. Then you're going to take this and you're going to turn it, turn it, turn it until it comes all the way in until it's approximately where this is now. A good idea before you start taking anything apart is to measure from one end all the way down to the other end. And that way there you have an idea of how long you want this to be.
Of course you're going to bring it down to an alignment shop after you're done this because all you have to be off is just one little half a turn and that's going to have your wheels going god knows where. All right? So with that said, we don't know what kind of condition these threads are in in here. I'm going to go with probably very bad where I can't even get the rot off of them, so we're just going to replace this whole unit. Okay? You know how to replace this if you wanted to, like I said, loosen up, loosen it, do do do, take this off, put on your new tire rod, snug it all up, get it to about the same length and, you know, take your risks the way that you're going to do it.
For me personally, boom, boom, boom. One unit. Measure it up. Put your new one together right on the floor. Have it about the same length. You put a nut there. You put a nut here. You tighten these puppies up and you're good to go down the road to your alignment shop. All right, so I'm just going to put a little bit of penetrant in here. And what I'm going to do is I'm just going to take this apart just so I can show you what I was talking about because that way there you'll have a visual. And usually when people see things, they can understand them a little better. So we got this sprayed. We're going to let it sit. We're going to take this out right here, and this out right here. So we're going to loosen this and loosen this. 15 millimeter. There we are. That's nice and loose.
Generally speaking, when you're replacing a tie rod, whether it's the inner or the outer or both, you always replace the sleeve. So if you get an outer tire rod, get yourself a sleeve. You get an inner tie rod, get yourself a sleeve. Get an inner and an outer tie rod? Sleeve. Okay?
These are loose. Let's grab a measuring tape. We'll get a rough estimate of how long this is, so when we put our new parts together, we'll know exactly the length that we need it.
Okay, so it looks like we're at approximately 52 and a quarter inches from right here to the same thing on the inner tie rod end. Same exact spot. Right there. Hold this up here. Yeah. 52 and a quarter. Write that down or remember it or carve it into a rock. Whatever you want to do. I'm going to write it down real quick.
So we're just going to grab this with our pliers here. You're going need as much leverage as you can possibly get. We're just going to see. Yeah, right. This is why I said you got to replace these things. Let's try though. Give it the old college try.
Ah! Oh yeah. The threads in there really aren't looking very good. So you can see the threads right in there where they're all rusted up.
Holy cow. Okay. So it's pretty obvious that this isn't going to be coming off. We can see the threads on the inside of the tie rod ends, where they go into the sleeves, they're in very poor condition and there just really isn't any purpose of taking this apart. So what we're going to do is I'm going to take it apart from the vehicle, I'll bring it over to the bench, and I'll put together a new assembly and I'll show you how to take apart each piece as it goes with new parts. It'll just be much better for the video. So we'll just get our cotter pin out of here. Get this out of here.
These are very rotted, so I'm not even going to try to pop them out of there. Cool. Grab our socket. Should be here. Let's see if this will go. Might be a little bit bigger. We got 21. Grab my air hose. Safety glasses on, of course. See if we can get this on here.
There we are. Is there a nut in there? It's going to take it. I'm going to go just like this. Get socket off of there. I'm going to leave this on here for now because we're going to grab our hammer. We're going to give this a loving bonk. And the tie rod end should come down and the nut's going to keep it from falling down and potentially hurting us.
So here we are. I'm going to grab a little bit of penetrant spray. Let that do its job. Now we're going to bonk right here. I'm going to be careful not to hit my rotor. And if I was keeping this outer tie rod end, which I'm not, I would be careful for hitting the boot.
There we are. You can see the stud, the nut did its job. Saved this from coming down, potentially hurting us. Let's move along.
I'm just going to get this cotter pin out of here. We're just going to go ahead and cut this off. Just going to get out the rest of this cotter pin real quick. What's left of it. We'll dispose of that. Now we're going to take off this nut right here. Just going to grab my socket. 21. Safety glasses on. There's our nut. Just going to put this back on here a few threads. Come on, let me get it on there. It's perfect. We have a couple options at this point. If you're going to be reusing this inner tie rod end right here, you don't want to bonk right here. If you're going to be replacing it and you really don't care what condition it's in, go ahead and give it a couple loving bonks and try to drive it through. Here we are, that can move around quite a bit. The nut did its job. We'll take that back off of there, and we can get this out of here.
Okay. Slide that out. This whole unit right out of here. Here we are. Okay, so now you're imagining that this is up inside the vehicle, right? This is our old piece. Obviously I can't get it apart so I'm just going to show you with the new. Here's your outer tie rod end. This is where it connects to the knuckle. You've got your nut and everything like that, right? This is our sleeve. The adjustment sleeve. This is that inner tie rod end where it goes down and connects into the rest of the steering. All right.
What you would normally do with it in the vehicle if you were just replacing one piece at a time. Okay? If you're replacing both then you just tear them right out. Just like we kind of did the two nuts. Take the whole thing out, measure it, put your new piece together, throw it in. One piece at a time, this is what you would do. Loosen up these nuts like what we did here. Then you turn this sleeve. Whether you have to use your nice long pliers like we tried doing here to get it apart, or if you can do it by hand because it's brand new, like this one, I guess you'd go that way. But anyway, to get to the point, you just take your sleeve. And you just turn it, turn it, turn it.
So when you take this apart, you're going to want to be careful because this arm right here or inner tie rod end, will come swinging down. All right? This one right here might try a little bit, but it really can't go far. It's not super long. Here we are.
So right now, if this was in the vehicle, this inner tie rod end would have just swung down. Okay? And this one was pretty close, ready to come off. At this point, there's your outer tie rod end. You'd replace this with a brand new one or replace this with a brand new one. Of course, no matter what you do, you're going to replace this. This is your sleeve and it's threaded all the way through.
So here we are friends, a quick product comparison for you. Right here we have our left front outer tie rod end out of our 1996 Dodge Ram 1500. And right here you have your brand new quality 1A Auto part. As you can tell, these parts are created equal. If I hold him up like this and I could turn the bar at the same time, you can see that the outer tie rod end threads, they pretty much match up.
That means that this is the same length. That's super important. It comes with a brand new nut on there for you, which is always nice, in case maybe yours happened to strip out or it's just plain old garbage anyway. It's got a brand new sealed boot on there. You don't have to worry about any moisture getting in. With all that said, I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a quality part to install into the vehicle, so I'm going to go ahead and do it. If you need this or any other part, you can always check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.
Okay, friends, we've got our inner tie rod end. We're going to go right up like this and put it in through the hole. I'm going to take our castle nut. Here we are. We're not going to tighten it yet. I bet you're wondering what this is. Just a little tool that I got just to go like this, and that's going to keep this from moving around. All right, so we're going to tighten this up. We're going to use our 21 millimeter socket. Okay? Once you know that you have it nice and snug, you're going to try to find where the slot is on the stud itself and line it up with the slots in the nut. This one right here, this slot goes this direction. So I'm going to bring this a little further. There we are. We'll grab our cotter pin and we can move along. We're going to take our cotter pin. Let's go right down through here. Make sure that's all the way down inside the slot. Take your cutters, grab it, bend it over.
There's no way that this nut can come loose on its own. Okay, so let's say that you're doing all these tie rods, right? You're doing the inner and the outer here or even you're just doing one. But anyway, you start putting one all the way in here. And that looks pretty good. It's nice and deep. Now you're going to take this one and we're going to try to get this one on here, right? We're going to spin it in and spin it in. The problem with doing it this way is your tie rods are going to be out of time. Let's see what I can show you. Get it up on there. I'll try to get the teeth where you can see them. Almost there.
Okay. So if one of your tie rods, like this one right here, this one comes up to there, you can see where the threads are just barely starting to come up to where this bolt is. And this one, the threads are all the way up here. That means that your tie rods are out of time. The person's going to be doing your alignment after this. They're going to have to loosen these back up, try to adjust this, right? And this tie rod is going to be adjusted in way further than the inner tie rod. And this could be a vice versa situation where you might have this one screwed in further. That's called timing your tie rods. You need to time your tie rods and that's done with this adjustment sleeve. So that's what I'm going to show you. What we're going to do is we're just going to take this all completely back apart and start right from ground zero. And yeah, you could do this with this up inside the vehicle, you know, all connected in. It's a little bit harder that way. And for the purpose of this video, I can demonstrate what I'm talking about without actually having it in the vehicle, or connected in, so I'm just going to do it that way.
And it'll be easier for you to see. See, these things are all coming apart just randomly. When you do this and you turn this so it comes all the way off, theoretically, not theoretically, but what should happen is is when this is loose, it should be ready to come off of this side at the same time. That would mean that it's screwed into both tie rods the same exact amount. Okay. It's all apart. You got your outer. You got your sleeve. You've got your inner. Something that's always good to do is you're going to use a little bit of copper never seize right there. Right there. Okay? That's just going to help this be able to move around for a long, long time. It's going to be great for the alignment person when they go to help you out and do your alignment.
So now we're just going to take the sleeve. Let's start it on just the teensiest bit, just one turn. And that's it. Outer tie rod end. We're going to do the same thing. Just try to turn it on. Just one turn. Hardest part's just getting them lined up. Okay, that's one turn. Now to continue, you're just going to hold your tie rod so it can't spin. You could even put it back into the vehicle. Whatever you want to do. And as I turn this, it's actually drawing both these tie rods in at the same exact time. That means that they're going to be timed well.
Let's keep turning this until the length of this to here is 52 and a quarter inches. That's what the original bar was measured at, so that's what I'm going to go with with this one. And the alignment shop can do the rest. Looks like we're getting pretty close. Just keep bringing it in here. It should be quite a bit. Perfect. 52 and a quarter. Okay, so now what you do, put this up in here and tighten up these.
You can tell we're pretty close because it lined right up. I didn't have to move the knuckle around or anything. Perfect. We'll tighten that up in a minute. Let's take a look at this stuff. These right here, the sleeve actually has grooves. Grab that in a second. Right here where the bolt goes through. So you can't spin this and expect it to just kind of like line up, because it doesn't. It needs to be perfectly lined up with that screw and the important reason why they did that was just so when you're tightening, it's going to put the squeeze right here. All right? If you could spin this, some people might try to put it all the way up here. And then how's it going to, wow's it going to squeeze solid metal to try to tighten it? It can't. It's impossible. Okay? Let's put this back in here. We'll grab our nut and we'll continue. Okay, so we're just going to tighten this up to 65 foot pounds.
Just going to hit it one more time. Here we are. Just going to take a peek. We need the slots on the nut to line up with the hole for the cotter pin that goes through the stud. This looks like it's quite a bit past it. It's about lined up with this part of the castle. So what you need to do now is you need to continue tightening. You do not loosen it to get to the next hole. You tighten to the next hole.
Grab my ratchet here. Grab our cotter pin that came with it. Take that, go right through there. You can do whatever you want with this cotter pin. You can put it off to one side, both sides, up top. You do you, booboo. As long as it's bent over and there's no way that it can come off and this nut can come off on its own, you're doing all right. Let's continue.
So we're going to hold the backside, or the bolt side, with our 17 millimeter wrench. We're going to tighten up the the nut side with our 18 millimeter socket. This does have a torque spec, so get it so it feels like it's pretty snug. I like to put these so they're facing straight out. But of course, that'll change once the alignment's done because, you know, if it, if they need to go out a little bit this'll need to get turned, in which case, you know, the nuts will be in their corresponding spots. So to start, this is where I go. Okay. That's pretty bottomed out. Let's grab our torque wrench. I've got that set to 40 foot pounds.
There we are. We'll do this one. Perfect. So both of those are nice and tight, 40 foot pounds. Let's continue.
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Hey friends, it's Len here at 1A Auto. Today we're going to be working on our 1996 Dodge Ram 1500. I'm going to show you something very basic, replacing the right front inner tie rod end. It'll be super easy. I can do it and you can do it too. As always, if you need any parts you can check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.
Okay friends, so we're underneath the vehicle, and we can see we have our right front outer tie rod end. It comes along here. You have a sleeve right here, that's the adjustment sleeve. Then the right front inner tie rod, which goes to the pitman arm, which is connected to your steering box. So what you need to pay attention to is the condition of your threads on each one of these tie rod ends.
Generally speaking, if your vehicle's as old as this one and it hasn't been serviced in a long time, slash, had any of these parts replaced, they're probably pretty darn rotted at this point. If you look at them, you can see. I'm going to grab a screwdriver here. Just a nice little small pocket screwdriver. Just go like this.
Just with this pocket screwdriver, I'm literally peeling away the threads on this tie rod, which comes here. Then this one right here really doesn't look like it's too much better. This one's semi-decent. So the problem is inside of this. Is this where it is? Let's feel. This is turned. So this somebody put facing up like that. So moisture and all that crud's going right inside there, and it's probably rotted out the threads on the tie rod ends where it goes into the sleeve.
Generally speaking, it's always a great idea to just go ahead and replace the whole thing as one assembly. So you would get the right front outer tie rod, which is this nice long tie rod. You would get yourself a new sleeve, which you need to do no matter what, whether you're replacing the outer or the inner. And you would replace this as well all at one time. Okay? If for some reason you don't want to, maybe yours are in good condition, we'll say you're just replacing the outer tie rod, right? The inner tie rod end's still in good condition, which this one isn't.
You would basically just unscrew this whole thing. You would unscrew the sleeve from this inner tie rod end right here. Take it right out, and then what you would do is you would just count just to make sure you know how many threads you want to go in on that tie rod end. So what we're going to do is we're just going to replace this whole assembly right here. But once it's apart with the new parts, I'll show you how all this would come apart. All right, so what we're going to do here is we're going to take our measuring tape and we're just going to get a nice guesstimate of the length from the outside of this tie rod end all the way across to this one. It looks like we're looking at about 42 and three quarters.
So we're going to write that down. When we put together our new tie rods, we want it to be 42 and three quarters inches. Okay, so what we're going to do, we have a cotter pin here and a nut. You would take those off. Give this a couple bunks with a hammer and it'll come falling down. This one right here, cotter pin and a nut. We'll come down here. You have where your shock mounts onto the arm. You're going to come right on the backside. There was a cotter pin back there with a nut. And then right up here, theoretically, there'll be a cotter pin somewhere on this possibly, and also of course the nut. So let's get started.
Okay, see it doesn't want to come off. There you go. This one. Get that out of there. This one right here should have a cotter pin as well. Carpet on this thing's pretty much wasted, so I going worry about that one. But theoretically, it should have a cotter pin, and this one should also have a cotter pin. They don't. Let's move along.
Okay, so we're going to take off this nut right here. It's 18 millimeter. Let's see if we can get it on there. There's our nut. It's a castle nut. We'll set this aside. We'll continue. All right, so right now this does not come out of our arm right here. So what we're going to do is we're going to take this side nut off, that washer off of there, the shock, and then the other washer that's under there. Then we'll just put a nice big socket over it. Looks like it's about the size of a 22. Then we should be able to break it free from the arm. So I have our 18. There's that. Turn nut, little locking nut. There should be a washer right here. They don't want to come off. It's really holding on there. Our washer. Pull that off of there, our other washer.
So now we're going to grab a socket and probably just a long ratchet. I'm just going to see if I can try to twist this to get it to break free. Let's get this on here. Once you break it free, you should be doing all right. At that point, you're just going to take off the nut from the back there. There we go. Put that on there for now. This part right here was right inside there. Okay, let's move along.
All right, so we're going to use our 21 millimeter socket. Come right up on here. It's pretty much ready to come off. Let's get our socket off of there real quick. It's our castle nut. I'm just going to put it on a few threads here. We'll come back to that in a minute. We're going to continue on. Do this one and that one over there. That one came off nice. Just set that on there. Come over here. This one I think I might grab a swivel. See if I can get a better shot at it.
All right, we're cooking now. So what needs to happen now? We've got all the mounting bolts loose for the nuts that hold the studs in. So now we need to start separating things. To do that, if you're replacing this inner tie rod right here, you can go ahead and bonk right up on this, as long as you're not worried about damaging it. If you're not replacing this and you're only doing the sleeve and the outer tie rod end, you do not want to bonk this. All right? You're going to have to try to come up along here, give this a few bonks, but then of course you risk damaging your power steering box. So it's really up to you. It's better just to do it as a complete unit anyway.
Of course, there is something like this as well. I'll pickle fork. You could use this available at 1aauto.com. Come right in like this. Give it some bonks. You see how it's angled like that? It's going to create a wedge and it's going to separate the two. All right? You could do the same thing all the way down here. The problem with using something like this is it's inevitable. It's going to damage the boot. Ultimately, it'll damage the ball and socket as well. So if you're not replacing the unit, you don't want to use a pickle fork. You're just going to have to keep bonking right about here. Bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, until this finally just seems like it's broken free.
So you do your booboo. Let's try it with a pickle fork, right in here. Oh yeah, that separated nice. Just make sure it's drops back in there. We don't want it coming out yet because we still got a little bit more work to do. This one's in really good condition, so I'm obviously not going to use the pickle fork on this one. Save that one for last. Come right over here. Make sure your nut's on this. Continue with my pickle fork here since it's working well.
Here we are. There's the reason for having the nut up there. It lets this dropdown without actually falling down and potentially hurting anybody. We'll continue onto that last one. All right, so this one right here is in great condition. So we're going to try to save it. I'm just going to use my nut. Put it on here. I'm going to make it so the threads are flush with the top of the castle as close as possible. It's only so I don't damage the threads on itself. And of course I don't damage the nut to the point that I can't reuse it. I'm just going to give this a loving bonk and see if we can get it to break free.
Let's see. Very nice. I'm going to take this out and the arm's going to come swinging down. So you want to make sure you have everything clear. Bring it down and get it out of the way. Put my nut right back on there so I don't lose it or misplace it. Awesome. So we're cooking right along here. This is pretty much ready to come out. You can use whichever side you want. Take that side out of there. Get that one out here. There we are.
Okay friends. So here we are. We've got it down on the bench for you so we can have a better look. You've got your inner tie rod end right here. You've got your sleeve and you've got your nice long outer tie rod end. If you're doing one at a time, let's say that maybe you were just doing your outer tie rod end right here, that'd be pretty much the outer tie rod end and the sleeve. If you were doing the inner tie rod end, you would do the inner tie rod end and the sleeve. There's never just an inner tie rod end to no sleeve or outer tie rod end and no sleeve, unless of course they're pretty much brand new and they look like this.
Generally speaking, it's always the best idea to just go ahead and replace the whole assembly. 1A Auto has it all very cost effective and it's really not going to cost you very much to do it right. So I would do it that way. But to continue, if you were just going to do the inner tie rod end, what you would do is you would take this off of the pitman arm. You would take the bolt out of here that holds your stabilizing shock and you would have it so everything's just hanging pretty much from right here and right here.
Then you would just turn this until it all comes free and vice versa for this side. If you're just doing this side, you would unattach right here. That's where the left front inner goes to. Then of course you would take this off right here. Leave all this still attached to the pitman arm into the steering thing. Then you just take this and take it right off. So I'll just show you what we're talking about. Let's say this is in the vehicle right now.
You would just turn this. What it's doing is it's actually unscrewing both these sides at the same exact time. when you go to install, it's very important that you time your tie rods properly, which essentially just means that you're going to be putting this on both tie rods at the same exact time. Okay? If it's maybe a thread off or something like that, it's really not that big of a deal. Of course, these things, those just come right off. Get this on here real quick. I could probably just take it off. Let's continue getting this thing out of here. Getting very close. There we are.
So it all came separated the exact same time and that's because of this right here. This is your tie rod adjusting sleeve. It's very important. The inside of this tie rod adjustment sleeve, I'm sure it doesn't look anything like this one where you can see all those threads and they're beautiful and perfect. A lot of times what you'll notice if you did happen to get this off, there'd hardly be any threads in there. It'd be rusted and rotted to the point that you don't even know if you're really want to put your tie rods in there. The reason for that is because once you put these on, the threads inside here need to grab onto the threads on here very tightly. If it's smooth surface on either the tie rod or inside the sleeve, even though you tighten this down as good as you can, that could pop right out.
You hit a good speed bump or a pothole or whatever you might have in your area, maybe you're going off-roading, whatever the case may be, you could pull your tie rod in right out of the sleeve. So to avoid that, you just replace it. If it doesn't look like it's going to be a saveable type of item like these right here where you can't even see the threads on them, just replace it. So let's jump ahead now and we'll do a product comparison.
Okay friends, a quick product comparison for you. Over here, we have our original right front inner tie rod end out of our 1996 Dodge Ram 1500. Over here, we have our brand new quality 1A Auto part. Both these parts are created equal. They're the same length. You can't see very much inside here, but if you could, it would come to the exact same area. If I go from this end right here and I come all the way over and I stuck a dowel pins straight down through here, those holes would line up perfectly.
All right, so that's great. Comes with a brand new boot. Once you tighten it up into your knuckle, it's going to be squeezed right up against there and it's going to be perfect. Brand new castle nut for you and it even comes with a brand new cotter pin. With that said, I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a quality part to install into the vehicle, so I'm going to go ahead and do it. As always, if you need this part or any other, you can check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.
All right, something that's good to do is you can either use a little bit of Copper Never Seize inside the sleeve or right on the bar itself. Just give a little spritz just like that. It's going to help keep moisture out of there and keep it flowing. It's also going to help the alignment person down the road when it comes time to do your alignment. So now we're going to start this on. It's important to do this. You just go on a teeny bit on one side. Give it two turns just like that so it's on. We're going to do the same thing on the other side, except this one I want to spin the tie rod. There we go, close. Come on. There it is. You make sure that you didn't go too far on either side. They're both about the same. Now what you do is you actually just turn the sleeve. Let's see if I can get it to do it.
We're just going to turn the sleeve until it comes all the way up. We'll get it as close to measurement of the original one as we can. Of course, if you had this in the vehicle, maybe you still have your tie rod still attached to the vehicle or the other tie rod, you would just be doing this in the vehicle. Since we're doing it all as one assembly, I can do it right on the bench. It's much easier. So now we're just going to measure this real quick. We're looking for 42 and three quarters from one end to the other. So it looks like we're just over 43. We'll just take it in a little bit more here. Try it more time. Got the end here, bring it down.
Looks like we're getting really close now. One more time. This is just a guesstimate, really a rough estimate. Because the alignment person is really going to be the person that's going to get this right in where it's supposed to go. Us personally, we're just trying to get us so we can go down the road to the alignment shop. We can go a little bit more. So it can get down the road to the alignment shop without burning the tires off of it on it's way. Sometimes people do stuff like this and they don't measure it. They just kind of eyeball, and by the time they get down to the alignment shop, tires making noises all the way down the road, they're all chopped up. The alignment guy's going to say, "What did you do?" Well, sorry.
But anyway, we've got this set to 42 and three quarters inches length. So let's go ahead and get it into the vehicle. All right, so it's time to get this up in here. I'm going to go right up into the pitman arm right here. Put our nut on there that way there we know we're safe. The bar can't go anywhere. Bring this one over here. That's also lined up. Should want to slide right in. There we go. So that's started, that's started. We can get our piece in here for our shock. Do that right after we get this in.
To get this lined up, you can just try to turn the wheels a little bit. That one's started in. I'm going to grab our piece. It's probably a good idea for us to clean this down. I'm just going to clean it real quick and we'll come right back. So we've got our piece. That's going to go right in here just like that. Take our nut and go right on the backside. I'm going to hold this. I'll tighten this up. Let's get this tight. It's nice and tight. We're going to take our washer, right on like that. I'm just going to use a little bit of grease right along this shaft right here. A lot of times that'll help get the rubber on there.
Just trying to get this lined up. There it is. Put This up on there. Put our nut on here. Snug this side up. That's pretty snug. Give it a teeny bit more. That's it, awesome. Let's tighten this up. We'll tighten this and that. We'll continue here. So we're just going to start at one end, work our way down. All we're going to do right now is just bottom these out and then we'll torque them down to manufacturer specifications.
There we are. We're going to go ahead and torque this down to 65 foot pounds. There we go. Just check it one more time. Take a peak. Looks like we might be able to get our cotter pin right through there. That's where the slot on the slotted nut is and where the hole is through the stud of the tie rod. We'll grab a cotter pin. All right, so we grabbed ourselves a cotter pin. I'm just going to go straight through here like this. You can just take your cutters, grab onto it. Let's try to peen it over, perfect. We're going to do the same for the others. Torque them all down, 65 foot pounds.
That looks like it's lined up pretty well. This one. That one looks like it's good too. Awesome. A lot of times, they won't line up perfectly. If for some reason your slot isn't lined up with the hole inside your tie rod, you have to continue tightening even past where you torqued it to. You cannot loosen it to the next little slot. You have to continue onto the next one by tightening.
It's pretty snug there. Peen this up. Right there, that's definitely tight, tight. We know that's tight. This is tight. Perfect. We'll tighten these up real quick. So let's snug these up. When you go to turn this, of course, the backside of the bolt is going to turn. So we'll grab our pliers. You can use pliers or a wrench or whatever you want to use really. When you go to tighten this down, you don't want to over tighten it. The torque spec for this is only 40 foot pounds, which isn't really very much. Grab my torque. We're looking for 40 foot pounds here. All right. There we are. Do this one. There we are. Just going to hit one more time, make sure it's pretty set. Definitely tight. This one. Okay, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight.
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Tools used
Oh hey friends, it's Len here at 1A Auto. Today I'm going to be working on our 1996 Dodge Ram 1,500 and I'm going to be replacing the left front inner tie rod end. Going to be super easy. I can do it and you can do it too. As always, if you need this or any other part, you can check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.
Okay, friends, so we're underneath the vehicle here. We have our left front outer tie rod end, which is this unit right here. It's approximately this long. Okay. You have your sleeve unit and then you have this right here that comes all the way across. Over to here. This would be your left front inner tie rod end. Okay. A lot of times what happens is, is exactly what this one looks like. You get a lot of rust and corrosion inside here. This should be where the sleeve is and all these threads right here on your tie rods should be inside here. This whole sleeve is a completely threaded unit and it threads onto this part and right here. When they get rotted and they look like this, the odds that the threads on the tie rods and the threads on the inside of this sleeve being good is just so minimal because all they're doing is sitting there collecting rust and rot.
And when you're dealing with steering and suspension, you want to make sure that you're being as safe as possible and you have as strong material as possible because last thing you want is bad threads on either of these two pieces and this pulling right out. Okay because you're driving down the road, your wheels are going nice and straight. Next thing you know there's no threads holding this in except for just the tightness of this and just slides right out, and I don't want to think of any worst case scenarios but I'm sure you can. And to avoid that, what I would recommend in this case, is you replace this whole unit. Okay. Left front, outer tie rod end, sleeve and the inner tie rod end, all the way down to here. All right. If you're not going to do that, and for some reason you want to risk it, and you do you Boo-boo. What you would do, loosen this nut right here all the way to the end, or even take it all the way off. Same thing with this one. These will rattle around. Digger, digger, digger, right?
You're going to take some nice big channel lock pliers, whatever you've got and you're going to turn this and you're going to turn it and turn it. Keep twisting it until these right here separate all the way out. Okay. At that point you would take your new tie rod end. You start it into the sleeve a little bit. Start the sleeve on this just a teeny bit. Put your tie rod end up inside the knuckle. Just kind of nut it for a couple of minutes. Then you're going to take this and you're going to turn it, turn it, turn it until it comes all the way in, until it's approximately where this is now. A good idea before you start taking anything apart is to measure from one end all the way down to the other end. And that way there you have an idea of how long you want this to be. Of course you're going to bring it down to an alignment shop after you've done this because all you have to be off is just one little half a turn and that's going to have your wheels going God knows where.
All right, so with that said, we don't know what kind of condition these threads are in, in here. I'm going to go with probably very bad where I can't even get the rot off of them. So we're just going to replace this whole unit. Okay? You know how to replace this if you wanted to. Like I said, loosen it, loosen it, take this off, put on your new tie rod, snug it all up, get it to about the same length and take your risks the way that you're going to do it. For me personally, boom, boom, boom. One unit. Measure it up. Put your new one together right on the floor. Have it about the same length. You put a nut there, you put a nut here, you tighten these puppies up and you're good to go down the road to your alignment shop.
All right, so I'm just going to put a little bit of penetrant in here and what I'm going to do is I'm just going to take this apart just so I can show you what I was talking about because that way there you'll have a visual, and usually when people see things they can understand them a little better. So we get this sprayed. We're going to let it sit. We're going to take this out right here and this out right here. So we're going to loosen this and loosen this. 15 millimeter. There we are. That's nice and loose.
Generally speaking, when you're replacing a tie rod, whether it's the inner or the outer or both, you always replace the sleeve. So if you get an outer tie rod, get yourself a sleeve. You get an inner tie rod, get yourself a sleeve. Get an inner and an outer tie rod, sleeve. Okay, these are loose. Let's grab a measuring tape. We'll get a rough estimate of how long this is. So when we put our new parts together, we'll know exactly the length that we need it.
Okay, so it looks like we're at approximately 52 and a quarter inches from right here to the same thing on the inner tie rod end. Same exact spot right there. Hold this up here. Yeah. 52 and a quarter. Write that down or remember it or carve it into a rock. Whatever you want to do. I'm going to write it down real quick. So we're just going to grab this with our pliers here. You're going to need as much leverage as you can possibly get. We're just going to see. Yeah, right. This is why I said you've got to replace these things. Let's try though. Give it the old college try. Oh yeah, the threads in there really aren't looking very good. So you can see the threads right in there where they're all rusted up. Holy cow.
Okay. So it's pretty obvious that this isn't going to be coming off. We can see the threads on the inside of the tie rod ends, where they go into the sleeves, they're in very poor condition and there just really isn't any purpose of taking this apart. So what we're going to do is I'm going to take it apart from the vehicle, I'll bring it over to the bench and I'll put together a new assembly and I'll show you how to take apart each piece as it goes with new parts. It'll just be much better for the video. So we'll just get our cotter pin out of here. That's out of here. These are very rotted, so I'm not even going to try to pop them out of there. Cool.
Grab our socket, should be here. Let's see if this will go on. It might be a little bit bigger. I got 21. Grab my air hose. Safety glasses on of course. See if we can get this on here. There we are. There's our nut in there. Just going to take it and go just like this. Get my socket off of there. I'm going to leave this on here for now because we're going to grab our hammer. We're going to give this a loving bonk and the tie rod end should come down and the nut's going to keep it from falling down and potentially hurting us.
So here we are. I'm going to grab a little bit of penetrant spray. Let that do its job. Now we're going to bonk right here. I'm going to be careful not to hit my rotor, and if I was keeping this outer tie rod end, which I'm not, I would be careful for hitting the boot. There we are. You can see the stud. The nut did its job. Saved this from coming down, potentially hurting us. Let's move along.
Just going to get this cotter pin out of here. I'm just going to go ahead and cut this off. Just got to get out the rest of this cotter pin real quick. What's left to it. We'll dispose of that. Now we're going to take off this nut right here. Just going to grab my socket. 21. Safety glasses on. There's our nut. Just going to put this back on here, a few threads. Come on. See if I can get it on there. It's perfect. We have a couple options at this point. If you're going to be reusing this inner tie rod end right here, you don't want to bonk right here. If you're going to be replacing it and you really don't care what condition it's in, go ahead and give it a couple of loving bonks and try to drive it through. There we are, that can move around quite a bit. The nut did its job. We'll take that back off of there and we can get this out of here. Okay. Slide that. Get this whole unit right out of here. There we are.
Okay, so now you're imagining that this is up inside the vehicle, right? This is our old piece. Obviously I can't get it apart so I'm just going to show you with the new. Here's your outer tie rod end. This is where it connects to the knuckle. You've got your nut and everything like that, right? This is our sleeve. The adjustment sleeve. This is that inner tie rod end, where it goes down and connects into the rest of the steering. All right. What you would normally do with it in the vehicle, if you were just replacing one piece at a time. Okay. If you're replacing both then you just tear them right out. Just like we kind of did the two nuts. Take the whole thing out, measure it, put your new piece together, throw it in.
One piece at a time, this is what you'd do. Loosen up these nuts like what we did here. Then you turn this sleeve, whether you have to use your nice long pliers like we tried doing here to get it apart. Or if you can do it by hand because it's brand new, like this one. I guess you go that way. But anyway, to get to the point, just take your sleeve and you just turn it, turn it, turn it. So when you take this apart, you're going to want to be careful because this arm right here or inner tie rod end, will come swinging down.
All right. This one right here might try a little bit, but it really can't go far. It's not super long. There we are. So right now, if this was in the vehicle, this inner tie rod end would have just swung down. Okay, and this one was pretty close, ready to come off. At this point, there's your outer tie rod end. You'd replace this with a brand new one or replace this with a brand new one. Of course, no matter what you do, you're going to replace this. This is your sleeve and it's threaded all the way through.
So here we are friends, a quick product comparison for you. Over here we have our left front inner tie rod end out of our 1996 Dodge Ram 1,500. Over here you have your brand new quality 1A Auto part. Both these parts are created equal. If you were to bring them up next to each other and you could see through this sleeve somehow, you would see that the end matches up at the end there. All right, it's got a same little bend right here, which is very important because this one right here has a little bend. Same length, same bend. You got the same end over here, even comes with a brand new castle nut and of course a grease boot. Super important, put that on there. With that said, I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a quality piece to install into the vehicle, so I'm going to go ahead and do it. As always, if you need this or any other part, you can always check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.
Okay, friends, we've got our inner tie rod end. We're going to go right up like this and put it in through the hole. I'm going to take our castle nut. There we are. We're not going to tighten it yet. Bet you're wondering what this is. Just a little tool that I got, just to go like this and that's going to keep this from moving around. All right, so we're going to tighten this up. We're going to use our 21 millimeter socket. Okay. Once you know that you have it nice and snug, you're going to try to find where the slot is on the stud itself and line it up with the slots in the nut. This one right here, this lock goes this direction. So I'm going to bring this a little further. There we are. We'll grab our cotter pin and we can move along.
We're going to take our cotter pin, just go right down through here. Make sure that's all the way down inside the slot. Take your cutters, grab it, bend it over. There's no way that this nut can come loose on its own. Okay, so let's say that you're doing all these tie rods, right? You're doing the inner and the outer here or even you're just doing one. But anyway, you start putting one all the way in here. Now it looks pretty good. It's nice and deep. Now you're going to take this one and we're going to try and get this one on here, right? We're going to spin it in and spin it in. The problem with doing it this way is your tie rods are going to be out of time. Let's see what I can show you. Get that up on there. Try to get the teeth where you can see them. Almost there.
Okay, so if one of your tie rods, like this one right here, this one comes up to there, you can see where the threads are just barely starting to come up to where this bolt is. And this one, the threads are all the way up here. That means that your tie rods are out of time. The person that's going to be doing your alignment after this. They're going to have to loosen these back up, try to adjust this right and this tire rod is going to be adjusted in way further than the inner tire rod. And this could be a vice versa situation where you might have this one screwed in further. That's called timing your tie rods. You need to time your tie rods and that's done with this adjustment sleeve. So that's what I'm going to show you.
What we're going to do is we're just going to take this all completely back apart and start right from ground zero and yeah, you could do this with this up inside the vehicle, all connected in. It's a little bit harder that way. And for purpose of this video, I can demonstrate what I'm talking about without actually having it in the vehicle or connected in, so I'm just going to do it that way. And it'll be easier for you to see. See these things are all coming apart just randomly. When you do this and you turn this so it comes all the way off, theoretically, not theoretically. But what should happen is when this is loose, it should be ready to come off of this side at the same time. That would mean that it's screwed into both tie rods, the same exact amount. Okay. It's All apart. You got your outer, you got your sleeve, you got your inner.
Something that's always good to do, is you're going to use a little bit of copper never-seize right there, right there. Okay. That's just going to help this be able to move around for a long, long time. It's going to be great for the alignment person when they go to help you out and do your alignment. So now we're just going to take the sleeve and start it on just a teeniest bit. just one turn and that's it. Outer tie rod end. We're going to do the same thing. Just try to turn it on. Just one turn. The hardest part's just getting them lined up. Okay, that's one turn. Now to continue, you're just going to hold your tie rod so it can't spin. You can even put it back into the vehicle, whatever you want to do. And as I turn this, it's actually drawing both these tie rods in at the same exact time. That means that they're are going to be timed well.
Let's keep turning this until the length of this to here is 52 and a quarter inches. That's what the original bar was measured at, so that's what I'm going to go with with this one. The alignment shop can do the rest. Looks like we're getting pretty close. Let's keep bringing it in here. It should be quite a bit. Perfect. 52 and a quarter. Okay, so now what you do, put this up in here and tighten up these.
You can tell we're pretty close because it lined right up, I didn't have to move the knuckle around or anything. Perfect. We'll tighten that up in a minute. Let's take a look at this stuff. These right here, the sleeve actually has grooves. Grab that in a second, right here where the bolt goes through. So you can't spin this and expect it to just kind of like line up because it doesn't, it needs to be perfectly lined up with that screw. And the important reason why they did that was just so when you're tightening, it's going to put the squeeze right here. All right. If you could spin this, some people might try to put it all the way up here and then how's it going to squeeze solid metal to try to tighten? It can't, it's impossible. Okay, let's put this back in here. We'll grab our nut and we'll continue.
Okay, so we're just going to tighten this up to 65 foot-pounds. Just going to hit it one more time. There we are. Just going to take a peak. We need the slots on the nut to line up with the hole for the cotter pin that goes through the stud. This looks like it's a quite a bit past it. It's about lined up with this part of the castle. So what you need to do now is you need to continue tightening. You do not loosen it to get to the next hole. You tighten to the next hole. Grab my ratchet here, grab our cotter pin that came with it. Take that, put it right through there.
You can do whatever you want with this cotter pan. You can put it off to one side, both sides, up top, you do you Boo-boo. As long as it's bent over and there's no way that it can come off and not come off on its own, you're doing all right. Let's continue. So we're going to hold the backside or the bolt side with our 17 millimeter wrench. We're going to tighten up the the nut side with our 18 millimeter socket. This does have a torque spec, so get it so it feels like it's pretty snug. I like to put these so they're facing straight out, but of course that'll change once the alignment's done because if they need to go out a little bit, this'll need to get turned, in which case, the nuts will be in their corresponding spots. So to start, this is where I go. Okay, that's pretty bottomed out. Let's grab our torque wrench. We've got that set to 40 foot-pounds. There we are. We do this one. Perfect. So both of those are nice and tight. 40 foot-pounds. Let's continue.
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Tools used
Oh, hey friends. It's Len here at 1A Auto. Today we're working on our 1996 Dodge Ram 1500 and I'm going to be showing you how to do a right front outer tie rod end. It's going to be super easy. I can do it, you can do it too. As always, if you need this part or any other, you can check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.
Okay friends, so we're underneath the vehicle and we can see we have our right front outer tire rod end comes along here. You have a sleeve right here, that's the adjustment sleeve, and then the right front inner tie rod, which goes to the Pitman arm, which is connected to your steering box. So, what you need to pay attention to is the condition of your threads on each one of these tie rod ends. Generally speaking, if your vehicles as old as this one and it hasn't been serviced in a long time slash had any of these parts replaced, they're probably pretty darn rotted at this point. If you look at them, you can see. I'm going to grab a screwdriver here, just a nice little small pocket screwdriver. Let's go like this, just with this pocket screwdriver. I'm literally peeling away the threads on this tie rod, which comes here and then this one right here really doesn't look like it's too much better. This one's semi-decent.
So the problem is, is inside of this ... Is this where it is? Feel. Okay, so this is turned. So this somebody put facing up like that, so moisture and all that crud's going right inside there and it's probably rotted out the threads on the tie rod ends where it goes into the sleeve. Generally speaking, it's always a great idea to just go ahead and replace the whole thing as one assembly. So you would get the right front outer tie rod, which is this nice long tie rod. You would get yourself a new sleeve, which you need to do no matter what, whether you're replacing the outer or the inner and you would replace this as well, all at one time. Okay? If for some reason you don't want to, maybe yours are in good condition ...
Well, say you're just replacing the outer tie rod, right? The inner tie rod end is still in good condition, which this one isn't. You would basically just unscrew this whole thing. You would unscrew the sleeve from this inner tie rod end right here, take it right out. And then what you would do is you would just count, all right, just to make sure you know how many threads you want to go in on that tie rod end. So what we're going to do is we're just going to replace this whole assembly right here, but once it's apart, with the new parts, I'll show you how all this would come apart.
All right, so what we're going to do here is we're going to take our measuring tape, we're just going to kind of get like a nice guesstimate of the length from the outside of this tie rod end all the way across to this one. And it looks like we're looking at about 42 and three quarters. So we're going to write that down, and when we put together our new tie rods, we want it to be 42 and three quarters inches. Okay, so what we're going to do, we have a Cotter pin here and a nut. You would take those off, give this a couple of bonks with a hammer and it'll come falling down. This one right here, Cotter pin and a nut. We'll come down here. You have where your shock mounts onto the arm. You're going to come right on the backside, there's a Cotter pin back there with a nut. And then right up here, theoretically, there'll be a Cotter pin somewhere on this, possibly, and also of course the nut. So let's get started.
Okay, looks like it doesn't want to come off. There you go, this one. Get that out of there. All right. This one right here should have a Cotter pin as well. Cotter pin on this thing's pretty much wasted, so I'm not going to worry about that one, but theoretically, it should have a Cotter pin and this one should also have a Cotter pin. They don't. Just move along.
Okay, so we're going to take off this nut right here, it's 18 millimeter, see if we can get it on there. There's our nut, it's a castle nut. We'll set this aside. We'll continue. All right, so right now this does not come out of our arm right here, so what we're going to do is we're going to take this side nut off, that washer off of there, the shock, and then the other washer that's under there and then we'll just put like a nice big socket over it. It looks like it's about the size of a 22 and then we should be able to break it free from the arm, so we have our 18. There's that turn nut or locking nut, should be a washer right here.
Doesn't want to come off, it's really holding on there. Okay. Our washer, all that off of there, that other washer. Okay, so now we're going to grab a socket and probably just a long ratchet and I'm just going to see if I could try to twist this to get it to break free. Okay, let's get this on here. Oh, yeah. Once you break it free, you should be doing all right. At that point you're just going to take off the nut from the back there. There we go. Put that on there for now. This part right here goes right inside there. Okay, let's move along.
All right, so we're going to use our 21 millimeter socket. I'm right up on here. It's pretty much ready to come off. Let's get our socket off of there real quick. That's our castle nut. Just going to put it on, a few threads here. We'll come back to that in a minute. We're going to continue on, do this one and that one over there. That one came off nice, just get that on there. And over here. This one I think I might grab a swivel, see if I can get a better shot at it.
Cool. All right, we're cooking now. So what needs to happen now? You've got all the mounting bolts loose or the nuts that hold the studs in, right, so now we need to start separating things. To do that, if you're replacing this inner tie rod right here, you can go ahead and bonk right up on this, as long as you're not worried about damaging it. If you're not replacing this and you're only doing the sleeve and the outer tie rod end, you do not want to bonk this. All right? You're going to have to try to come up along here, give this a few bonks, but then of course you risk damaging your power steering box, so it's really up to you. It's better just to do it as a complete unit anyway.
Of course, there is something like this as well, a pickle fork. You could use this, available at 1aauto.com, come right in like this, give it some bonks. You see how it's angled like that? It's going to create a wedge and it's going to separate the two. All right? You could do the same thing all the way down here. The problem with using something like this is it's inevitable, it's going to damage the boot and it'll ... Ultimately, it'll damage the ball and socket as well, so if you're not replacing the unit, you don't want to use a pickle fork. You're just going to have to keep bonking right about here. Bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, until this finally just kind of seems like it's broken free. So you do you, boo-boo.
Let's try it with the pickle fork. Right in here. Oh, yeah. That separated nice. Just make sure it drops back in there. We don't want it coming out yet because we still got a little bit more work to do. This one's in really good condition, so I'm obviously not going to use the pickle fork on this one. Save that one for last. Come right over here, make sure your nut's on this, continue with my pickle fork here, so it's working well. Here we are. There's the reason for having the nut up there. It lets this drop down without actually falling down and potentially hurting anybody.
We'll continue onto that last one. All right, so this one right here is in great condition, so we're going to try to save it. I'm just going to use my nut, put it on here. I want to make it so the threads are flushed with the top of the castle, okay? As close as possible. That's only so I don't damage the threads on itself, and of course I don't damage the nut to the point that I can't reuse it.
I'm just going to give this a loving bonk and see if we can get it to break free. Let's see. Oh yeah, very nice. I'm going to take this out, and the arm's going to come swinging down, so you want to make sure you have everything clear, bring it down and get it out of the way. Put my nut right back on there so I don't lose it or misplace it. Awesome. So we're cooking right along here. This is pretty much ready to come out, you can use whichever side you want, take that side out of there. Get that one out of here, and there we are.
Okay friends, so here we are. We've got it down on the bench for you so we can have a better look. You've got your inner tie rod end right here, you've got your sleeve and you've got your nice long outer tie rod end. If you're doing one at a time, let's say that maybe you are just doing your outer tie rod end right here, that'd be pretty much the outer tie rod end and the sleeve. If you were doing the inner tie rod end, you would do the inner tie rod end and the sleeve. There's never just an inner tie rod end to no sleeve or outer tie rod end and no sleeve, unless of course they're pretty much brand-new and they look like this. Okay?
Generally speaking, it's always the best idea to just go ahead and replace the whole assembly, 1A Auto has it all, very cost-effective and it's really not going to cost you very much to do it right, so I will do it that way. But to continue, if you were just going to do the inner tie rod end, what you would do is you would take this off of the Pitman arm, you would take the bolt out of here that holds your stabilizing shock and you would have it so everything's just hanging pretty much from right here and right here. Then you would just turn this ... until it all comes free and vice versa for this side.
If you're just doing this side, you would unattach right here. That's where the left front inner goes to. And then of course you would take this off right here, okay, leave all this still attached to the Pitman arm and to the steering thing, and then you just take this and take it right off. So I'll just tell you what we're talking about. Let's say this is in the vehicle right now. You would just turn this. What it's doing is it's actually unscrewing both these sides at the same exact time. Okay?
When you go to install, it's very important that you time your tire rods properly, which essentially just means that you're going to be putting this on both tie rods at the same exact time. Okay? If it's maybe a thread off or something like that, it's really not that big of a deal. Of course, these things, yeah, those just come right off. Get this on here real quick. I could probably just take it off, but ... Okay. Let's continue getting this thing out of here, getting very close. There we are.
Okay, so it all came separated at the exact same time and that's because of this right here. This is your tire rod adjusting sleeve. It's very important. The inside of this tie rod adjustment sleeve, I'm sure it doesn't look anything like this one where you can see all those threads and they're beautiful and perfect. A lot of times what you'll notice if you did happen to get this off, there would hardly be any threads in there. It'd be rusted and rotted to the point that you don't even know if you really want to put your tie rods in there. The reason for that is because once you put these on, the threads inside here need to grab onto the threads on here very tightly. If it's smooth surface on either the tie rod or inside the sleeve, even though you tightened this down as good as you can, that could pop right out.
You hit a good speed bump or, you know, a pothole or whatever you might have in your area. Maybe you're going off-roading, whatever the case may be, you could pull your tie rod end right out of the sleeve, so to avoid that you just replace it. If it doesn't look like it's going to be a saveable type of item like these right here where you can't even see the threads on them, just replace it. Okay? So let's jump ahead now and we'll do a product comparison.
So here we are friends, a quick product comparison for you over here. Right here we have our original right front outer tie rod end out of our 1996 Dodge Ram 1500. Over here we have our brand-new quality 1A Auto part. These parts created the exact same, got the same overall length. If you could see it would come down inside this right here and it would come out to about the same area. If you came down along here, you'd notice that if I could put a dowel, I can go straight through this hole and into that one, with having this end lined up.
It comes with a brand new castle nut. Even comes with a little bit of old grease if you put it on top of your old one like that. Let's clean that off. There we go. That looks a little bit better. Brand-new castle nut, brand-new boot, keep the moisture out of there, has everything you need. That said, I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a quality part to install onto the vehicle. As always, if you need any parts, you can always check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.
All right. Something that's good to do is you can either use a little bit of copper Never-Seez inside the sleeve or right on the bar itself. All right, let's give a little spritz. Just like that. It's going to help keep moisture out of there and keep it flowing. It's also going to help the alignment person down the road when it comes time to do your alignment. So now we're going to start this on. It's important to do this. You just go on a teeny bit on one side, give it two turns, just like that so it's on, we're going to do the same thing on the other side, except this one I want to spin the tie rod. There we go.
Oops, close. Come on. There it is. Okay, so you make sure that you didn't go too far on either side. They're both about the same and now what you do is you actually just turn the sleeve. See if I can get it to do it. We're just going to turn the sleeve until it comes all the way up and we'll get it as close to measurement of the original one as we can. All right. Of course, if you had this in the vehicle, maybe you still have your tie rod still attached to the vehicle or the other tie rod, you would just be doing this in the vehicle. Since we're doing it all as one assembly, I can do it right on the bench. It's much easier.
So now we're just going to measure this real quick. We're looking for 42 and three quarters from one end to the other. So it looks like we're just over 43 so we'll just take it in a little bit more here. Try that one more time. Down the end here, bring it down. Looks like we're getting really close now. And hit it one more time. Then this is just a guesstimate, really, like a rough estimate because the alignment person is really going to be the person that's going to get this right in where it's supposed to go. Us personally, we're just trying to get it so it can go down the road to the alignment shop. That looks, it can go little bit more. Yeah, so it can get down the road to the alignment shop without burning the tires off of it on its way.
Sometimes people do stuff like this and they don't measure it. They just kind of eyeball, and by the time they get down to the alignment shop, tire's making noises all the way down the road, they're all chopped up. And you know, the alignment guy is going to say, What did you do? Well, sorry. But anyway, we've got this set to 42 and three quarters inches length. So let's go ahead and get it into the vehicle. All right, so it's time to get this up in here. I'm going to go right up into the Pitman arm right here, put our nut on there, that way there we know we're safe. The bar can't go anywhere. And this one over here, and that's all lined up, it should want to slide right in. There we go. Okay, so that's started, that's started.
We can get our piece in here for our shock. Do that right after we get this in. To get this lined up, you can just try to turn the wheels a little bit. That one's started in. Okay. I'm going to grab our piece. It's probably a good idea for us to clean this down. I'm just going to clean it real quick, and we'll come right back.
Okay, so we've got our piece that's going to go right in here, just like that. Take our nut, go right on the backside. Cool. I'm going to hold this, and I'll tighten this up. All right, let's get this tight. That's nice and tight. Now we're going to take our washer, right on like that. I'm just going to use a little bit of grease right along this shaft right here. A lot of times that'll help get the rubber on there. Just trying to get this lined up. There it is. This up on there, got another one here. Just let this side up. Okay, that's pretty snug. Give it a teeny bit more, and that's it. Awesome. Let's tighten this up. We'll tighten this and that. We'll continue here.
Okay, so we're just going to start at one end, work our way down and all we're going to do right now is just bottom these out and then we'll torque them down to manufacturer's specifications. There we are. So we're going to go ahead and torque this down to 65 foot pounds. There we go, just check that one more time. Cool. Take a peek. Looks as though we might be able to get our Cotter pin right through there. That's where the slot on the slotted nut is and where the hole is through the stud of the tie rod. Grab a Cotter pin. All right, so we grabbed ourselves a Cotter pin. It's going to go straight through here like this.
You just take your cutters, grab onto it, just try to peen it over. Perfect. We're going to do the same for the others, torque them all down, 65 foot pounds. That one looks like it's lined up pretty well. This one. That one looks like it's good, too. Awesome. A lot of times they won't line up perfectly, and if for some reason your slot isn't lined up with the hole inside your tie rod, you have to continue tightening even past where you torqued it to. You can not loosen it to the next little slot. You have to continue onto the next one by tightening.
Looks pretty snug. Clean this up. Right there. That's definitely tight, tight. We know that's tight, and this is tight. Perfect. We'll tighten these up real quick. So let's snug these up. When you go to turn this, of course, the backside of the bolt is going to turn, so we'll grab our pliers. You can use pliers or a wrench or whatever you want to use, really. And when you go to tighten this down, you don't want to overtighten it, the torque spec for this is only 40 foot pounds, which isn't really very much. Okay, and grab my torque. This one. Yeah, okay. We're looking for 40 foot pounds here. There we are. Okay, this one. Here we are. Just going to hit it one more time to make sure it's reset. Definitely tight. This one. Okay. Tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight. Booyah.
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