Inspection station say I have a bad inner tie rod end. I disagree, but what can you do?

I got a new one and went to take the old one out and there's no wrench flats on the thing! To anyone who's changed theirs before, how did you do it?!

Thanks in advance!

 

I had the same problem with my 96 caravan. I ended up having to replace the entire steering rack as they come with inner tie-rods installed. I am glad I did that as it was not that expensive and fairly easy to do.

Thanks,
Alwaysdutch

 

make sure they are not miss diagnosing the problem being an outer tie rod or balljoint. You need a special tool to R&R inner tie rod. I've rarely seen inners ever go bad on these vans (under 250,000 miles). also, find out what the acceptable dimension of movement is allowed. could just be an overzealous inspector. I owned a semi, one day I got a ticket from a DOT jockey for rusty rims on my trailer... which was brand new just got it that week from the dealer (white rims had some rust specs where the impact gun had nicked the paint around the lugs)

 

I definitely think it's an overzealous (or just plain stupid) inspector. I feel no movement in the joint at all, but I cut the end of the thing off to get the boot off, so now it needs replacing whether it was bad or not.

 

Just to give closure to this thread, I got it off with a small pipe wrench. The flats on the new one didn't line up conveniently for the pipe wrench after bottoming out, so I just tightened it as much as I could by hand. I install blue Locktight so I'm hoping it will be good.

 

Most of the local car parts stores have a special loaner tool just for removing inner tie rods. I borrowed one from O'Reilly auto parts once and it worked great. They should be torqued around 60 foot-pounds. I hope the Loctite works. Did you get a front end alignment afterwards?

 

Most of the local car parts stores have a special loaner tool just for removing inner tie rods. I borrowed one from O'Reilly auto parts once and it worked great. They should be torqued around 60 foot-pounds. I hope the Loctite works. Did you get a front end alignment afterwards?

 

I tried the loaner from Azone, but it didn't work on the factory tie rod end, because it had no flats at all, and it didn't work on their replacement part because the tool had a hex end and the part was a square end.

I never found out if the Locktite worked because when I went in for an alignment a week later the @!*# NEW part I had installed was bad! This time I could feel it. Took it back to Azone and got another. This time I bought an inner tie rod tool from Harbor Freight for $60 to install it and it worked like a charm.

I still haven't had it aligned because then they said the ball joint was bad. Just changed that today.

 

I used a pipe wrench as well. Works just fine.