1961 tie rod issues

[Notar61]

Roger,

Yeah I guess I will see what the "new" tie rod ends that they ordered do. They are supposed to be in tomorrow. I have a feeling that they will do the same thing as the other parts. After that I guess I will take it somewhere else. Hope I can get this figured out. I don't want a $70 alignment to turn into a $500 dollar job.

Thanks again,
Andrew

[Notar61]

Just a thought......there's not a specific left or right side part for the inner or outer tie rods right? Basically if I bought 2 inner or 2 outer tie rod ends it wouldn't matter which side they went on, as long as I used the inner in the correct place and the outer in the correct place....this is the only thing I could think of that might cause a problem. But if they were left or right side specific you would think they wouldn't even thread on if I had them on the wrong side.....man this whole thing is driving me kinda crazy!

[Luva65wagon]

You'll have outers with a thread going in one direction and inner threads in the opposite direction. In theory, if the taper and shape of the tie-rods are identical, it would not matter if the inners and outers got swapped. Basically you'd put them as they are called-out-as just so you could know to buy the correct part in the future if it needed replacement. In the end you clearly can't have two inners on one side and two outers on the other, no matter what.

Considering the tie-rods only adjust toe, they can only be a) too long, b) too short, c) incorrect thread depth/length/diameter, or d) wrong taper, or e) wrong shape (to cause binding against the drag link or spindle). I can think of nothing to cause the adjustment of one side to "move" the other side. Adjusting one side increases the 'overall' toe and position of the steering wheel. You shift centering the steering wheel by moving each side the same amount so as to keep toe the same, but rotate the steering wheel in relation to the drag link.

Anyway... makes me nervous when I hear shops give vague descriptions of failure. They'll make profit on these new parts. That much is for sure.

Not sure where you are, but Gene turned me onto a shop up north (south Everett) who's done my Ranchero twice. They knew what they were doing.

[Notar61]

Yeah I've done a lot of tie rod replacements and have gotten alignments from this same shop many times and never had a problem, at least on my other newer cars. This whole thing is really bizarre, especially considering the 61 has been in the shop for almost 2 weeks!

I'm actually down in Tulsa, OK but you guys on here have helped me out immensely on numerous times with my old car and I really appreciate it!

The new parts that the shop ordered yesterday are supposed to be in today, so once I hear something I will report back here. I don't see how the ones they ordered are going to be any different than all the other parts we have already tried. I really think they are just overlooking something simple or they just aren't doing something right. But I guess we will see soon enough.

Thanks again for all the input!

-Andrew

[SmithKid]

The owner of the shop (American Car Care in Everett) that Roger is referring to stated to me that the "young kids" don't know how to align our older cars. I've had mine done there twice, and as Roger stated, he's had his done twice there. Also my son's '69 Mustang, but not sure if that falls in the same category.

[Notar61]

Still haven't heard any status updates today.

I had another thought.

From what I can gather online the outer tie rod ends should be Right Hand thread, and the inner tie rod ends should be Left hand thread. Is it possible that somehow an inner and outer got switched? Or would a LH thread tie rod even start to thread into to something that was supposed to be RH hand thread? Maybe I got a wrongly labeled part and somehow they got mixed up? I'm really second guessing everything about the whole situation.

[SmithKid]

RH thread will NOT start on LH thread or vice versa!