chuck45

My RK HD Tie Rod just came in. HD does not do this thing justice. It is more like a billy club for a gorilla. At any rate nobody around here stocks the ES194R.

NAPA doesn't sell Moog. NAPA could order their house brand that crossed over and wanted 69.00 each. These tie rod ends must be beefy; one of the listed uses is for an old Ford C600 series truck!

CarQuest does deal in Moog, doesn't stock it but can order it for me - but they want 100.00 a piece plus freight.

Believe it or not I just found them on Amazon.com for 53.62 with free shipping. I have two on the way for 107.24 with no shipping or sales tax. Since I have a Prime membership with Amazon the free shipping is 2nd day but even without the membership standard 5 day shipping would be free.

Dang I love the Internet. I can't wait to get this thing on. Now I have to decide if I want to do anything about the steering. If so I may not go RK as they use a dropped Pitman arm and I worry about the torque on the steering box shaft. I may go look at the new AEV unit.

Or I may forego doing further steering mods now and concentrate on getting the front axle shafts replaced and go to CTM U-Joints. Then rear axle shafts after that.

MOWrangler

Yeah... the ends cross referenced to a 3/4 ton dodge as well. I had to order the Moogs in and they ran around $69 apiece. One was the incorrect version (left threaded instead of right), so I will have the reorder in time to put them on this weekend. I hadn't decided about whether to do the drag link or not, yet. So many other things to spend money on...

wgr

As said here before, tierod loses it's tension and strenght once bend that it has after it is made, and so it will bend more easily from same spot once damaged. But...isn't there a way just to bend it back and then weld or bolt a strong reinforcement piece of steel into it ? Anyone done this ? If so i would like to see pics of it. And would it be even more easy to do this before i am going to smash mine into a rock and bend it. Any thoughts on this....

chuck45

I imagine that you could bend it back and scab on a reinforcing piece of metal. But if it bends on the trail and you have no welder and no stock of scrap metal you're SOL.

As to doing it as a preventative measure you'd have to deide where to reinforce and then with what. I guess you could take a piece of 1"x1"x1/4" (or maybe even go 1 1/4") angle iron and scab it along the top and then heat it to conform to the bends at each end and then weld the ends down too. It seem rather inelegant to me though. The RK tie rod seems like it would be damn near indestructable and is the proper way to go.

thomasbynum

The reason the RK tie rod isn't adjustable is because it doesn't have an adjustment sleeve. (It is SOLID steel, not tubing) That is the weakest point on any rod. They don't use a left hand thread on one TRE and a right on the other because there isn't enough clearance to twist the whole bar. It would hit the diff cover & you would still have to remove SS anyway.

The RK tie rod is strong enough to set it one time & not have to adjust it again.
(If you bend this bar or TRE's, you will probably bend ball joints too)