Outer Tie Rods

I noticed the outer tie rod ends needed a refresh when I was doing the lower ball joints. I assumed the inners would need to be replaced as well. I ordered OEM outers from Maita Toyota and went with ACDELCO from RockAuto for the inners. Why are OEM inner tie rod ends so expensive?

When the inners finally showed up I went over all my notes, gathered some tools and jumped right in. What could go wrong?

Right had 7 threads showing and took 18 turns to remove. Installed with 7 threads showing and only took 17 turns. But after zooming in on this image I count 8 threads.

Left had 8 threads showing and took 18 turns to remove. Installed with 8 threads showing and only took 14 turns.

I hesitantly went for a test drive. Steering wheel was all over the place. Wheel started a good deal left but seemed to “walk” around, left and right, while driving. Best I can describe it as is “loose” and “wobbly”. It felt pretty radical but it was only one trip around the block and I was on edge.

I’d wrongly assumed that the new OEM parts would be identical to the old parts.

Left TREs. Zoomed in using Photoshop I count 36 threads on the left and 32 on the right. I guess that explains the 4 fewer turns when installing the new part on the driver’s side.

UPDATE 8/9/21: After zooming in and counting that extra thread on the right tie rod end a dozen times I just couldn’t let it be. After giving it another turn things feel much better and the steering wheel is too far left but that should be fixed during the alignment tomorrow.

UPDATE 8/10/21: Alignment took 30 minutes and everything seems good. Only 4 threads showing on each side which makes some sense since there were 4 fewer threads on the new parts.