What's up everyone! I hope everyone is having a great summer! It has been a while since I spent a part of a weekend working on my baby so time for an update. I jacked her up to change the oil last weekend and this is what I found:
Both are worn badly but the drivers side is much worse! Upon further inspection these were the culprits:
As you can see they are shot! The drivers side was so bad (pic on the right) that you could literally blow on it and it would swivel! No wonder the drivers side tire was down to the cords!! I priced replacement at an unnamed chain tire center and they wanted $300 plus an alignment. They wanted $70 each for just the outer tie rods. I can't imagine what they would have charged for the inner ones! So, I went to NAPA and bought both inner and outer for both sides for less than $100 and spent about 2 hours completing the job. Here are the parts:
The work was really straight forward and about as uncomplicated as front end suspension work can be. If you have tools and some time and a place to work, by all means give this a shot! My car has 117,000 miles on it so if your fbody has high miles, or is steering inconsistently, or tires are wearing oddly, do yourself a favor and check out your tie rod assemblies. I actually could have just changed just the outer end but since I could get everything for just a little more than they would have charged for one tie rod end, I decided to change it all. Here are some pics of the finished job:
Now for some new toys!!! :)
I was able to pick up some BRAND NEW IN BOX parts for my baby! I got a Wilson FAST 92mm intake, PTM 92mm throttle body, and a set of red top #30 (actually 36#) fuel injectors. If I had ordered these parts and paid for shipping they would have cost around $2000 give or take a couple hundred. I got these for the incredible low price of $1000! So obviously, no matter how badly I need new tires LOL, I could not pass this deal up! These parts, along with the BNIB Yank SS4000 stall torque converter will be going in shortly. All I need to do is pick up my cam and spring kit (gonna hold off on new heads for a while) and my baby will be rocking!!
Everyone be safe and keep woking on those killer rides!! I will be back with another update soon!!
Peace
Jman
