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Just an FYI that I just found out the hard way. I know plenty of us like to have big rims (20" +) on our trucks but it turns out that those big pretty rims wear out the tie rod ends pretty bad. Be sure and check them, and replace if needed, before you go in for your next alignment.
doh! Thanks for the heads up, what are the signs to look for that new ones are needed?
Tie rods are very rarely a concern with stock ride and wheels. This is good info. You should see the '08 we put 26's on...LOL
Not necessarily true. I've always ran 20's or 22's, and only had one RF inner tie rod end wear out, at 44k. Truck has 118k now, still all tight. Alignment gets checked and adjusted about 4 times a year. The real problem is that people are not lubing the front end every 3000 miles.
I did not mean to infer the larger wheels hurt them. I did say that stock wheels don't.
We have lowered quite a few of these trucks and yes the inner tierods always seem to get loose sooner than later. Especially if the wheels are 20's and larger, and to add to it if the lowering consist of springs in the front. I will not lower any of the 99 and newer trucks with springs any more, only spindles and control arms.
We live in truck country up here. And out here, not too many modded trucks, mostly stock. At my business, we replace quite a few late model inner tie rod ends, and 95% of these trucks are bone stock. The number 1 problem is lack of maintenance. These front ends are not getting greased properly. I guess the bottom line is you get what you pay for. Go to a shop like mine, pay a little more for oil change & lube, and it gets done properly. Price shop around, find a cheap quick-lube shop, and let a teenager who doesn't know anything about anything, with no training, work on your vehicle.....look at all the money you saved.
I was using my own truck as an example, because it has never ran anything smaller than a 20" wheel, and it has been mainenanced properly.
I'll agree that the very few failures we've seen have been inners. Then again, this area has lots of old people.
I have a DJM 2-4 Pro-Drop on my truck (uses lower A-arms to lower front). I would say the most noticable symptom was the steering wheel not being straight after I had it aligned which led me to believe they did a half-ass job on my alignment. It pulled to the right (so the steering wheel was canted to the left) and the truck seemed to wonder. One very obvious symptom was when I would crank the wheel to make a sharp turn it would feel like the steering wheel would make a POP or CLUNK sound and sometimes it would POP or clunk several times while rounding a single corner. I probably should have greased the fittings a little more........live and learn
what makes me mad on my drop is that ALL the grease boots are busted already. So I cant grease them up
oooops, I have been meaning to grease these joints I'm just not sure exactly where. Does anyone have a pic of these locations?