1995 Dodge Ram 3500 Truck 4 Wheel Drive Front Passenger Side Inner Tie Rod TRQ PSA68399

Hey friends, it's Len here at 1A Auto. Today we're going to be working on our 1996 Dodge Ram 1500. I'm going to show you something very basic, replacing the right front inner tie rod end. It'll be super easy. I can do it and you can do it too. As always, if you need any parts you can check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.

Okay friends, so we're underneath the vehicle, and we can see we have our right front outer tie rod end. It comes along here. You have a sleeve right here, that's the adjustment sleeve. Then the right front inner tie rod, which goes to the pitman arm, which is connected to your steering box. So what you need to pay attention to is the condition of your threads on each one of these tie rod ends.

Generally speaking, if your vehicle's as old as this one and it hasn't been serviced in a long time, slash, had any of these parts replaced, they're probably pretty darn rotted at this point. If you look at them, you can see. I'm going to grab a screwdriver here. Just a nice little small pocket screwdriver. Just go like this.

Just with this pocket screwdriver, I'm literally peeling away the threads on this tie rod, which comes here. Then this one right here really doesn't look like it's too much better. This one's semi-decent. So the problem is inside of this. Is this where it is? Let's feel. This is turned. So this somebody put facing up like that. So moisture and all that crud's going right inside there, and it's probably rotted out the threads on the tie rod ends where it goes into the sleeve.

Generally speaking, it's always a great idea to just go ahead and replace the whole thing as one assembly. So you would get the right front outer tie rod, which is this nice long tie rod. You would get yourself a new sleeve, which you need to do no matter what, whether you're replacing the outer or the inner. And you would replace this as well all at one time. Okay? If for some reason you don't want to, maybe yours are in good condition, we'll say you're just replacing the outer tie rod, right? The inner tie rod end's still in good condition, which this one isn't.

You would basically just unscrew this whole thing. You would unscrew the sleeve from this inner tie rod end right here. Take it right out, and then what you would do is you would just count just to make sure you know how many threads you want to go in on that tie rod end. So what we're going to do is we're just going to replace this whole assembly right here. But once it's apart with the new parts, I'll show you how all this would come apart. All right, so what we're going to do here is we're going to take our measuring tape and we're just going to get a nice guesstimate of the length from the outside of this tie rod end all the way across to this one. It looks like we're looking at about 42 and three quarters.

So we're going to write that down. When we put together our new tie rods, we want it to be 42 and three quarters inches. Okay, so what we're going to do, we have a cotter pin here and a nut. You would take those off. Give this a couple bunks with a hammer and it'll come falling down. This one right here, cotter pin and a nut. We'll come down here. You have where your shock mounts onto the arm. You're going to come right on the backside. There was a cotter pin back there with a nut. And then right up here, theoretically, there'll be a cotter pin somewhere on this possibly, and also of course the nut. So let's get started.

Okay, see it doesn't want to come off. There you go. This one. Get that out of there. This one right here should have a cotter pin as well. Carpet on this thing's pretty much wasted, so I going worry about that one. But theoretically, it should have a cotter pin, and this one should also have a cotter pin. They don't. Let's move along.

Okay, so we're going to take off this nut right here. It's 18 millimeter. Let's see if we can get it on there. There's our nut. It's a castle nut. We'll set this aside. We'll continue. All right, so right now this does not come out of our arm right here. So what we're going to do is we're going to take this side nut off, that washer off of there, the shock, and then the other washer that's under there. Then we'll just put a nice big socket over it. Looks like it's about the size of a 22. Then we should be able to break it free from the arm. So I have our 18. There's that. Turn nut, little locking nut. There should be a washer right here. They don't want to come off. It's really holding on there. Our washer. Pull that off of there, our other washer.

So now we're going to grab a socket and probably just a long ratchet. I'm just going to see if I can try to twist this to get it to break free. Let's get this on here. Once you break it free, you should be doing all right. At that point, you're just going to take off the nut from the back there. There we go. Put that on there for now. This part right here was right inside there. Okay, let's move along.

All right, so we're going to use our 21 millimeter socket. Come right up on here. It's pretty much ready to come off. Let's get our socket off of there real quick. It's our castle nut. I'm just going to put it on a few threads here. We'll come back to that in a minute. We're going to continue on. Do this one and that one over there. That one came off nice. Just set that on there. Come over here. This one I think I might grab a swivel. See if I can get a better shot at it.

All right, we're cooking now. So what needs to happen now? We've got all the mounting bolts loose for the nuts that hold the studs in. So now we need to start separating things. To do that, if you're replacing this inner tie rod right here, you can go ahead and bonk right up on this, as long as you're not worried about damaging it. If you're not replacing this and you're only doing the sleeve and the outer tie rod end, you do not want to bonk this. All right? You're going to have to try to come up along here, give this a few bonks, but then of course you risk damaging your power steering box. So it's really up to you. It's better just to do it as a complete unit anyway.

Of course, there is something like this as well. I'll pickle fork. You could use this available at 1aauto.com. Come right in like this. Give it some bonks. You see how it's angled like that? It's going to create a wedge and it's going to separate the two. All right? You could do the same thing all the way down here. The problem with using something like this is it's inevitable. It's going to damage the boot. Ultimately, it'll damage the ball and socket as well. So if you're not replacing the unit, you don't want to use a pickle fork. You're just going to have to keep bonking right about here. Bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, until this finally just seems like it's broken free.

So you do your booboo. Let's try it with a pickle fork, right in here. Oh yeah, that separated nice. Just make sure it's drops back in there. We don't want it coming out yet because we still got a little bit more work to do. This one's in really good condition, so I'm obviously not going to use the pickle fork on this one. Save that one for last. Come right over here. Make sure your nut's on this. Continue with my pickle fork here since it's working well.

Here we are. There's the reason for having the nut up there. It lets this dropdown without actually falling down and potentially hurting anybody. We'll continue onto that last one. All right, so this one right here is in great condition. So we're going to try to save it. I'm just going to use my nut. Put it on here. I'm going to make it so the threads are flush with the top of the castle as close as possible. It's only so I don't damage the threads on itself. And of course I don't damage the nut to the point that I can't reuse it. I'm just going to give this a loving bonk and see if we can get it to break free.

Let's see. Very nice. I'm going to take this out and the arm's going to come swinging down. So you want to make sure you have everything clear. Bring it down and get it out of the way. Put my nut right back on there so I don't lose it or misplace it. Awesome. So we're cooking right along here. This is pretty much ready to come out. You can use whichever side you want. Take that side out of there. Get that one out here. There we are.

Okay friends. So here we are. We've got it down on the bench for you so we can have a better look. You've got your inner tie rod end right here. You've got your sleeve and you've got your nice long outer tie rod end. If you're doing one at a time, let's say that maybe you were just doing your outer tie rod end right here, that'd be pretty much the outer tie rod end and the sleeve. If you were doing the inner tie rod end, you would do the inner tie rod end and the sleeve. There's never just an inner tie rod end to no sleeve or outer tie rod end and no sleeve, unless of course they're pretty much brand new and they look like this.

Generally speaking, it's always the best idea to just go ahead and replace the whole assembly. 1A Auto has it all very cost effective and it's really not going to cost you very much to do it right. So I would do it that way. But to continue, if you were just going to do the inner tie rod end, what you would do is you would take this off of the pitman arm. You would take the bolt out of here that holds your stabilizing shock and you would have it so everything's just hanging pretty much from right here and right here.

Then you would just turn this until it all comes free and vice versa for this side. If you're just doing this side, you would unattach right here. That's where the left front inner goes to. Then of course you would take this off right here. Leave all this still attached to the pitman arm into the steering thing. Then you just take this and take it right off. So I'll just show you what we're talking about. Let's say this is in the vehicle right now.

You would just turn this. What it's doing is it's actually unscrewing both these sides at the same exact time. when you go to install, it's very important that you time your tie rods properly, which essentially just means that you're going to be putting this on both tie rods at the same exact time. Okay? If it's maybe a thread off or something like that, it's really not that big of a deal. Of course, these things, those just come right off. Get this on here real quick. I could probably just take it off. Let's continue getting this thing out of here. Getting very close. There we are.

So it all came separated the exact same time and that's because of this right here. This is your tie rod adjusting sleeve. It's very important. The inside of this tie rod adjustment sleeve, I'm sure it doesn't look anything like this one where you can see all those threads and they're beautiful and perfect. A lot of times what you'll notice if you did happen to get this off, there'd hardly be any threads in there. It'd be rusted and rotted to the point that you don't even know if you're really want to put your tie rods in there. The reason for that is because once you put these on, the threads inside here need to grab onto the threads on here very tightly. If it's smooth surface on either the tie rod or inside the sleeve, even though you tighten this down as good as you can, that could pop right out.

You hit a good speed bump or a pothole or whatever you might have in your area, maybe you're going off-roading, whatever the case may be, you could pull your tie rod in right out of the sleeve. So to avoid that, you just replace it. If it doesn't look like it's going to be a saveable type of item like these right here where you can't even see the threads on them, just replace it. So let's jump ahead now and we'll do a product comparison.

Okay friends, a quick product comparison for you. Over here, we have our original right front inner tie rod end out of our 1996 Dodge Ram 1500. Over here, we have our brand new quality 1A Auto part. Both these parts are created equal. They're the same length. You can't see very much inside here, but if you could, it would come to the exact same area. If I go from this end right here and I come all the way over and I stuck a dowel pins straight down through here, those holes would line up perfectly.

All right, so that's great. Comes with a brand new boot. Once you tighten it up into your knuckle, it's going to be squeezed right up against there and it's going to be perfect. Brand new castle nut for you and it even comes with a brand new cotter pin. With that said, I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a quality part to install into the vehicle, so I'm going to go ahead and do it. As always, if you need this part or any other, you can check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.

All right, something that's good to do is you can either use a little bit of Copper Never Seize inside the sleeve or right on the bar itself. Just give a little spritz just like that. It's going to help keep moisture out of there and keep it flowing. It's also going to help the alignment person down the road when it comes time to do your alignment. So now we're going to start this on. It's important to do this. You just go on a teeny bit on one side. Give it two turns just like that so it's on. We're going to do the same thing on the other side, except this one I want to spin the tie rod. There we go, close. Come on. There it is. You make sure that you didn't go too far on either side. They're both about the same. Now what you do is you actually just turn the sleeve. Let's see if I can get it to do it.

We're just going to turn the sleeve until it comes all the way up. We'll get it as close to measurement of the original one as we can. Of course, if you had this in the vehicle, maybe you still have your tie rod still attached to the vehicle or the other tie rod, you would just be doing this in the vehicle. Since we're doing it all as one assembly, I can do it right on the bench. It's much easier. So now we're just going to measure this real quick. We're looking for 42 and three quarters from one end to the other. So it looks like we're just over 43. We'll just take it in a little bit more here. Try it more time. Got the end here, bring it down.

Looks like we're getting really close now. One more time. This is just a guesstimate, really a rough estimate. Because the alignment person is really going to be the person that's going to get this right in where it's supposed to go. Us personally, we're just trying to get us so we can go down the road to the alignment shop. We can go a little bit more. So it can get down the road to the alignment shop without burning the tires off of it on it's way. Sometimes people do stuff like this and they don't measure it. They just kind of eyeball, and by the time they get down to the alignment shop, tires making noises all the way down the road, they're all chopped up. The alignment guy's going to say, "What did you do?" Well, sorry.

But anyway, we've got this set to 42 and three quarters inches length. So let's go ahead and get it into the vehicle. All right, so it's time to get this up in here. I'm going to go right up into the pitman arm right here. Put our nut on there that way there we know we're safe. The bar can't go anywhere. Bring this one over here. That's also lined up. Should want to slide right in. There we go. So that's started, that's started. We can get our piece in here for our shock. Do that right after we get this in.

To get this lined up, you can just try to turn the wheels a little bit. That one's started in. I'm going to grab our piece. It's probably a good idea for us to clean this down. I'm just going to clean it real quick and we'll come right back. So we've got our piece. That's going to go right in here just like that. Take our nut and go right on the backside. I'm going to hold this. I'll tighten this up. Let's get this tight. It's nice and tight. We're going to take our washer, right on like that. I'm just going to use a little bit of grease right along this shaft right here. A lot of times that'll help get the rubber on there.

Just trying to get this lined up. There it is. Put This up on there. Put our nut on here. Snug this side up. That's pretty snug. Give it a teeny bit more. That's it, awesome. Let's tighten this up. We'll tighten this and that. We'll continue here. So we're just going to start at one end, work our way down. All we're going to do right now is just bottom these out and then we'll torque them down to manufacturer specifications.

There we are. We're going to go ahead and torque this down to 65 foot pounds. There we go. Just check it one more time. Take a peak. Looks like we might be able to get our cotter pin right through there. That's where the slot on the slotted nut is and where the hole is through the stud of the tie rod. We'll grab a cotter pin. All right, so we grabbed ourselves a cotter pin. I'm just going to go straight through here like this. You can just take your cutters, grab onto it. Let's try to peen it over, perfect. We're going to do the same for the others. Torque them all down, 65 foot pounds.

That looks like it's lined up pretty well. This one. That one looks like it's good too. Awesome. A lot of times, they won't line up perfectly. If for some reason your slot isn't lined up with the hole inside your tie rod, you have to continue tightening even past where you torqued it to. You cannot loosen it to the next little slot. You have to continue onto the next one by tightening.

It's pretty snug there. Peen this up. Right there, that's definitely tight, tight. We know that's tight. This is tight. Perfect. We'll tighten these up real quick. So let's snug these up. When you go to turn this, of course, the backside of the bolt is going to turn. So we'll grab our pliers. You can use pliers or a wrench or whatever you want to use really. When you go to tighten this down, you don't want to over tighten it. The torque spec for this is only 40 foot pounds, which isn't really very much. Grab my torque. We're looking for 40 foot pounds here. All right. There we are. Do this one. There we are. Just going to hit one more time, make sure it's pretty set. Definitely tight. This one. Okay, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight.

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