2006 Cadillac Escalade EXT with Cast Iron Lower Control Arms without Aluminum Steering Knuckles Front 8 Piece Steering & Suspension Kit TRQ PSA58818

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Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing and maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20-something years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this, to show you the correct way to install parts from 1A Auto.com. The right parts, installed correctly, that's going to save you time and money. Thank you, and enjoy the video.

In this video I'm going to show you inner and outer tie rod replacement. This truck actually just needed the inner, but if you're replacing the inner, you might as well replace the outer as well. These tie rods fit this whole generation of GM trucks and SUV's - trucks from 98 - 06 and SUV's from 99 - 07.
The tools you'll need are a jack and jack stands, a 22 mm lug wrench or socket and ratchet. You'll need either a 35 mm wrench or a 12 inch adjustable wrench that can go to 35 mm and then you'll need a second adjustable wrench as well, a tie rod removal tool, a grease gun, torque wrench, and pliers.
The clunking noise was the inner tie rod. You can see here, when I shake the tire back and forth you'll see the inner tie rod move but that steering arm inside doesn't move, so you know there's play in there and it needs to be replaced.

Start out by raising and securing the vehicle on a jack stand and then remove your cap and wheel. We're going to remove this bolt. We've got a ratchet. If you don't have a breaker bar, use a ratchet and a piece of pipe. The bolt should come off pretty easily. Take the bolts off most of the way. I'm planning on replacing the outer tie rod as well, so I'm going to use a pickle fork to separate it. The best way to go about this is to get the wrench on it from underneath and push. That should break her free. I'm just going to speed up as I pull that out. You want to make sure that your outer tie rod spins with the wrench so the whole assembly spins and you don't shorten or lengthen the tie rod -- the inner and outer tie rod assembly.

There's your whole assembly out. If you can see here, I've got my old assembly, inner tie rod and outer tie rod, and I want to measure right from the edge of this surface here right to the end. I'm taking my new inner tie rod and outer tie rod and I put them together, just to compare. This will give you a good preliminary alignment. We'll put this nut a little closer. We can put it together now. It will be a good preliminary alignment until you can get your vehicle to a shop where you can get a real alignment.

I'm just leaving my nut right there and spinning my outer tie rod off. The nut marks the place where your tie rod was and then taking off that outer tie rod just makes it easier to get the inner one on. That allows me put my inner tie rod on. Speed it up here as I use the wrench to tighten the tie rod up. Then I can put my outer tie rod right back on and go right up to the nut. Then I'll just fast-forward here as I put that outer tie rod back on the inner tie rod. Now I'm just taking the nut or just getting the outer tie rod in place. Take the nut off the new tie rod, and I'm just going to get some of the debris off the steering knuckle there, and then you can push on the stud on the tie rod and get it lined up with the steering knuckle, and then push it up and in, and start your nut back on.

We'll tighten this up to 65 foot-pounds. Pull a little tighter here and we can get this cotter pin through. We'll fast-forward here as we install the cotter pin and bend the end over and then use a 7 mm wrench and install our grease fitting. We'll take a wrench screw up here. The other one holds the outer tie rod and just tighten up the block nut. Now you want to use a grease gun and grease both the joint for the outer tie rod and the inner tie rod.

Use some more fast-forward here. As you put the wheel and tire back on, start all the lug nuts one by one by hand first, then use your wrench to preliminary tighten them, then you can lower the vehicle back down on the ground, torque the lug nuts to 120 foot-pounds. I'm using a crossing pattern and then I do it one more time, go around all eight and make sure they're tight. Then you can put your center cap back on and you should be all set.

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