How to Diagnose a Bad Inner Tie Rod

If you're driving down the road in your vehicle and you're feeling that the steering wheel is vague, loose, or you're getting a vibration through it, you may have a loose inner or outer tie rod. We're going to show you how to check the inner and outer tie rods on this vehicle.

There's an inner and outer tie rod here. With the vehicle supported in the air and the tire off the ground, put your hand at 9:00 and 3:00. You can wiggle the tire back and forth and you can – on this one you can actually look through the wheel, but you can also feel it, that there is too much play in the inner tie rod, which is right in here. That needs to be replaced.

Here we have our outer tie rod assembly, our inner tie rod assembly. This is the adjustment sleeve. It has two jam nuts. When you're setting your alignment and your tow, this is what's being adjusted. Whether the wheel is in towards the vehicle or out towards the vehicle, it affects how you track straight down the road. We can see how this inner one is worn out. The boot has failed and all the grease has come out of it. That's caused water intrusion, it's now rusted, and it's worn out the ball and socket joint that's inside of it. That's why it needs to be replaced.

Here is an old tie rod. It's similar to the one that's on the vehicle. I've removed the boot so that you can see what I'm talking about on the inside. It uses a ball and socket joint. When all of the grease comes out of this, say, the boot is torn or ripped, kind of like that, water can get in here. It rusts out this joint and it causes excess wear. You'll get excess play and then the tie rod has failed. Now you understand how to diagnose inner and outer tie rods. You can buy new TRQ parts at 1AAuto.com.