1996 Dodge Ram 3500 Truck 4 Wheel Drive Front Passenger Side Outer Drag Link TRQ PSA67557

Oh, hey friends. It's Len here at 1A Auto. Today we're working on our 1996 Dodge Ram 1500 and I'm going to be showing you how to do a right front outer tie rod end. It's going to be super easy. I can do it, you can do it too. As always, if you need this part or any other, 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 tire rod end comes along here. You have a sleeve right here, that's the adjustment sleeve, and 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 vehicles 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. Let's go like this, just with this pocket screwdriver. I'm literally peeling away the threads on this tie rod, which comes here and then this one right here really doesn't look like it's too much better. This one's semi-decent.

So the problem is, is inside of this ... Is this where it is? Feel. Okay, so 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 ...

Well, say you're just replacing the outer tie rod, right? The inner tie rod end is 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, all right, 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, we're just going to kind of get like a nice guesstimate of the length from the outside of this tie rod end all the way across to this one. And it looks like we're looking at about 42 and three quarters. So we're going to write that down, and 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 of bonks 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's 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, looks like it doesn't want to come off. There you go, this one. Get that out of there. All right. This one right here should have a Cotter pin as well. Cotter pin on this thing's pretty much wasted, so I'm not going to worry about that one, but theoretically, it should have a Cotter pin and this one should also have a Cotter pin. They don't. Just move along.

Okay, so we're going to take off this nut right here, it's 18 millimeter, 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 and then we'll just put like a nice big socket over it. It looks like it's about the size of a 22 and then we should be able to break it free from the arm, so we have our 18. There's that turn nut or locking nut, should be a washer right here.

Doesn't want to come off, it's really holding on there. Okay. Our washer, all that off of there, that other washer. Okay, so now we're going to grab a socket and probably just a long ratchet and I'm just going to see if I could try to twist this to get it to break free. Okay, let's get this on here. Oh, yeah. 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 goes right inside there. Okay, let's move along.

All right, so we're going to use our 21 millimeter socket. I'm right up on here. It's pretty much ready to come off. Let's get our socket off of there real quick. That's our castle nut. 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 get that on there. And over here. This one I think I might grab a swivel, see if I can get a better shot at it.

Cool. All right, we're cooking now. So what needs to happen now? You've got all the mounting bolts loose or the nuts that hold the studs in, right, 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, a 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 and it'll ... 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 kind of seems like it's broken free. So you do you, boo-boo.

Let's try it with the pickle fork. Right in here. Oh, yeah. That separated nice. Just make sure it 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, so it's working well. Here we are. There's the reason for having the nut up there. It lets this drop down 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 want to make it so the threads are flushed with the top of the castle, okay? As close as possible. That'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. Oh yeah, 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 of here, and 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 are 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. Okay?

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 will 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. And then of course you would take this off right here, okay, leave all this still attached to the Pitman arm and to the steering thing, and then you just take this and take it right off. So I'll just tell 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. Okay?

When you go to install, it's very important that you time your tire 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, yeah, those just come right off. Get this on here real quick. I could probably just take it off, but ... Okay. Let's continue getting this thing out of here, getting very close. There we are.

Okay, so it all came separated at the exact same time and that's because of this right here. This is your tire 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 would hardly be any threads in there. It'd be rusted and rotted to the point that you don't even know if you 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 tightened this down as good as you can, that could pop right out.

You hit a good speed bump or, you know, 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 end 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. Okay? So let's jump ahead now and we'll do a product comparison.

So here we are friends, a quick product comparison for you over here. Right here we have our original right front outer tie rod end out of our 1996 Dodge Ram 1500. Over here we have our brand-new quality 1A Auto part. These parts created the exact same, got the same overall length. If you could see it would come down inside this right here and it would come out to about the same area. If you came down along here, you'd notice that if I could put a dowel, I can go straight through this hole and into that one, with having this end lined up.

It comes with a brand new castle nut. Even comes with a little bit of old grease if you put it on top of your old one like that. Let's clean that off. There we go. That looks a little bit better. Brand-new castle nut, brand-new boot, keep the moisture out of there, has everything you need. That said, I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a quality part to install onto the vehicle. As always, if you need any parts, you can always 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-Seez inside the sleeve or right on the bar itself. All right, let's 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.

Oops, close. Come on. There it is. Okay, so you make sure that you didn't go too far on either side. They're both about the same and now what you do is you actually just turn the sleeve. See if I can get it to do it. We're just going to turn the sleeve until it comes all the way up and we'll get it as close to measurement of the original one as we can. All right. 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 so we'll just take it in a little bit more here. Try that one more time. Down the end here, bring it down. Looks like we're getting really close now. And hit it one more time. Then this is just a guesstimate, really, like 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 it so it can go down the road to the alignment shop. That looks, it can go little bit more. Yeah, so it can get down the road to the alignment shop without burning the tires off of it on its 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, tire's making noises all the way down the road, they're all chopped up. And you know, the alignment guy is 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. And this one over here, and that's all lined up, it should want to slide right in. There we go. Okay, 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. Okay. 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.

Okay, so we've got our piece that's going to go right in here, just like that. Take our nut, go right on the backside. Cool. I'm going to hold this, and I'll tighten this up. All right, let's get this tight. That's nice and tight. Now 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. This up on there, got another one here. Just let this side up. Okay, that's pretty snug. Give it a teeny bit more, and that's it. Awesome. Let's tighten this up. We'll tighten this and that. We'll continue here.

Okay, so we're just going to start at one end, work our way down and all we're going to do right now is just bottom these out and then we'll torque them down to manufacturer's specifications. There we are. So we're going to go ahead and torque this down to 65 foot pounds. There we go, just check that one more time. Cool. Take a peek. Looks as though 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. Grab a Cotter pin. All right, so we grabbed ourselves a Cotter pin. It's going to go straight through here like this.

You just take your cutters, grab onto it, just try to peen it over. Perfect. We're going to do the same for the others, torque them all down, 65 foot pounds. That one 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, and 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 can not loosen it to the next little slot. You have to continue onto the next one by tightening.

Looks pretty snug. Clean this up. Right there. That's definitely tight, tight. We know that's tight, and 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. And when you go to tighten this down, you don't want to overtighten it, the torque spec for this is only 40 foot pounds, which isn't really very much. Okay, and grab my torque. This one. Yeah, okay. We're looking for 40 foot pounds here. There we are. Okay, this one. Here we are. Just going to hit it one more time to make sure it's reset. Definitely tight. This one. Okay. Tight, tight, tight, tight, tight, tight. Booyah.

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