Pacs Legend

I have 2 front tierods bad, took it in for an alignment and couldnt do it, said i need to replace tierods, I read on here to just have someone hold your wheel still and turn the wheel a little if you see the tierod moving around you know its bad, how do i know if i need to replace just the end, or the entire assembly? thanks in advance, Mark

A6Gary

out, not the shaft from the steering rack. Raise the front wheels off the ground and check the play in the wheel by twisting/pulling the wheel left to right while the steering wheel is locked (or some one holding it). If you feel play, then the tie rod ends are probably bad.

itzed

The tie rod has two ends. One attached to the steering rack, the other attacted to the wheel. Referred to as the inner and outer ends. Both swivel and wear. The end attached to the wheel (outer) is replacable as the "tie rod end". But the inner end can go bad as well. When that happens you need to replace the entire tie rod. There's a special wrench for loosening the inner tie rod nut from the rack, and you need to use some locktite when putting the new one on. I did it on my '95 Jetta without the special tool by getting underneath and using a wrench. I have not yet looked at them on my A6 (since I've only owned it for 2 days <g&gt.

Ed

4Driver4

The "inner tie rod" (if you can call it that) is just a rubber bushing that rarely fails. Take a look - it's nothing like your Jetta.

Mr. Malcontent

get one of the tie rod ends to move. They tried for 3 days and finally said they would have to replace the whole assembly.

In retrospect I should have told them to stop working on the car and I would've tried to get the tie rod end freed up myself. It turned out to be a $400 alignment.

scrogers

Same here, those $350 alignments are a real good time ;-)

4Driver4

Remember "spec" has a variance. If you want the tech to wrestle the car barely into spec, send him a rusty mess. If you want the car dead center spec, clean it up first. ;-)

itzed

Like I said, I've only owned the A6 for 2 days now. I'm looking forward to learning more. BTW, maybe the fact that the inner end seldom fails might be why not many places sell the entire tie rod. With VW, they fail often enough to be pretty common.

Ed