Champagne

Hey Guys,

one of my tie rod rubber bellows is torn. What is involved in replacing it. Will the car need to be re-aligned?

Thanks

Paul

ErnestSw

No.

AO

If you remove the tie-rod or outer ball joint, you will.... BUT there is a way around having to pay for an alignment.

Get yourself one of those HF laser levels - I'm sure you already have one though. Then when you order your boot, make sure you get a steering rack centering bolt. I know 928 Spec carries them, not sure about Int'l. The bolt will allow you to index the rack.

Jack up the car, index the rack (the plug where the bolt goes is in the middle - yellow plug IIRC) then take an old rotor, and glue the HF laser level to the inside face of the rotor so you can mount it hat-to-hat and have the laser level stick out beyond the fender. Now, spin the rotor so the level reads level and shoot a laser beam onto the wall or garage door and mark it with a sharpie. You now have a point of reference to put the toe back to. It should end up being status quo when everything is back together. Just don't move the car until you're totally done.

Go ahead and pull the outer ball joint, slide off the boot and put the new one on. Put the ball joint back on, re mount the laser level rotor and adjust the toe on the one side so the dot lines up. Done!

This also works if you need to mess with the lower suspension ball joint. Just make sure you sight a plum dot too.

Champagne

Hey Doc, are you alright? I know you to be much more loquacious

Andrew: that is simply brilliant Thank you Sir, that is now the plan.

Thanks

Paul

jpitman2

My 83 has a bellows with the small outer end clamped on a spacer, such that the hole is ~1.5" . When one gave up, I got a generic boot kit which had multiple steps in the ends, you just worked out how far back to cut it to get the hole size that fitted. With the 1.5" hole on mine, I was able to slip the new boot over the tie rod end, and didnt have to even loosen the lock nut , so no need for an alignment at all. If you have a boot that clamps down directly on the tie rod, you may not be able to do this of course.
jp 83 Euro S AT 50k

heinrich

How does one remove the tie rod end?

jpitman2

One undoes the nut holding the vertical connection to the steering upright and disconnects the taper from the steering with a ball joint removing tool (See MANY other posts on this!), then holds a flat on the horizontal part of the joint with one spanner while loosening the lock nut with another spanner, then just unscrew the tie rod end. USeful to mark tie rod with paint/white-out so you have a starting point for where to fit the new tie rod end on the thread. Are you sure you need to remove the tie rod end - is it faulty, or has its rubber boot failed? As above , you may be able to avoid this IF you are only replacing the inner tie rod end bellows/boot.
jp 83 Euro S AT 50k BTDT.

heinrich

Thank you I just did it. I have a few racks .. and I needed to set alignment from the old one to the new one. Worked very well. Anyway on the old one I totally killedthe little booties, and so our wonderful friend the flying canine is sending me a half dozen .... Man I love having the prts right here. Anyway ... the old one ... well, it had a good ONE INCH of play on the road wheel. Can you say ... HOW THE HECK DID THEY DRIVE THAT WAY!?? ... and no it's on my red project '85, not Godzilla.

Greggles

I think Big Dave's write up may help
http://www.928oc.org/928oc_michigan/TieRod.html

heinrich

Dang that is excellent!!!!