Heavy Duty Tie Rods?

[Marky Dissod]

Different knuckles and center links and, and, and ...

Have a feeling that this would be better ILLUSTRATED, as in, someone takes an entire 2500 kit of steering & suspension bits, hook it all up, and show the incompatibilities ...

This is the kind of thing I'd likely only get to see in Mexico ...

 

[Matthew Jeschke]

Oh lord... I got my truck back from shop. Immediately started searching for the "bad tie rod". Something got lost in translation because I cannot find it anywhere. Then I recall them telling me, their master technician came and was able to get it aligned. My guess is when the first guy had a little trouble he blamed a tie rod but didn't verify. Then it got handed off to somebody else to do *sigh*

I know shops try hard to do a good job. But I tend to loose more time than doing it myself whenever I go to a shop. I bought some of the tools to do alignment... I've done it before and is a royal PITA. However, in hindsight easier than going to two shops, and having a handful of technicians try to figure it out... especially when nothing was out of spec and so far as I can tell nothing is broken. Oh and truck drove like a dream just I got new tires and wanted to make 100% sure alignment was spot on.

First shop was a comedy of errors but when after 3 hours of them fiddling with it I saw the tech adjusting the tie rods w/o measuring anything (it was off the rack). He told me I had a bad tie rod but the guy looked so insanely confused I don't think he had any alignment experience. I felt he was shopping for an excuse to stop working on it. Truck barely drove alignment was so bad. Limped it into a second shop who was much better but first tech started working on it and asked me if I thought I had a bad tie rod and I said maybe, idk (I did replace gearbox and there's some lash to be taken out yet which I told them). I told them to get toe as best they could but please adjust camber and caster spot on. I get it back from shop, they said another tech took over for the first guy (who thought tie rod was bad). He got toe to -0.6 per side which I think is within spec. I took it home and try as hard as I might I could find NO loose ball joints in the steering system or elsewhere.

Always a fun day... Now I'm chasing phantom problems lol

 

[dps01]

Bit reluctant to add the center link regardless as it changes interface for inner tie rod (if I break something I cannot go to parts store to fix).

KRYPTONITE UCA, tie rod ends, and sway bar links on my 2003 Z71..

 

[Matthew Jeschke]

@dps01 you have the full treatment! Is your truck lifted too?

 

[dps01]

Truck is only leveled, not lifted.
With the new UCA, lower ball joints, pitman and idler arms it runs like it was brand new.

Coil over conversion TBD.

 

[Matthew Jeschke]

How do you like the coil over conversion? What differences did you notice with it?

Have a feeling that this would be better ILLUSTRATED, as in, someone takes an entire 2500 kit of steering & suspension bits, hook it all up, and show the incompatibilities ...

This is the kind of thing I'd likely only get to see in Mexico ...

I'd be excited if I could find a 3/4 ton chassis in the junkyard. In which case I'd be pulling TONS of parts (front and rear diff, steering, etc). I'd be interested in pulling nearly entire front suspension. In the nearly 10 years I've been scouring the yards by me I've not seen a single one yet. It's wild. Almost like people don't junk them.

My friend worked the factory line for his entire career building GM work trucks. He claims most of the fitment is same from the 1/2 to 3/4 ton.

 

[Marky Dissod]

My friend worked the factory line for his entire career building GM work trucks. He claims most of the fitment is same from the 1/2 to 3/4 ton.

My hope is that one could replace a Tahoe / Sububurban 1500 steering & front suspension kit
with an entire H2 or Suburban 2500 steering & front suspension kit.
I'm not necessarily suggesting mix'n'matching, although that'd be even cooler.

 

[dps01]

do you like the coil over conversion?

Clarification… Have not completed the conversion yet. Installation date is TBD.

 

[Matthew Jeschke]

They Kryptonite stuff is certainly awesome. I've spoken with their Tech Support as well and they have a good team over there. Nice guys. I'd be inclined to buy from them again.

 

[Coveman]

+1 on the Kryptonite tie rods, dems beefy. I do remember some fitment questions for the 2013 3/4 ton burb (Burb not listed as a fitment, model year change for the pickups is different than SUVs) so I wasn’t sure which set to buy… so if in doubt call their customer service number.

 

[Matthew Jeschke]

+1 on the Kryptonite tie rods, dems beefy. I do remember some fitment questions for the 2013 3/4 ton burb (Burb not listed as a fitment, model year change for the pickups is different than SUVs) so I wasn’t sure which set to buy… so if in doubt call their customer service number.

I second their customer service as well. It's great. I had concerns getting an alignment after I put on the sleeves years back. They were super helpful when I called them, and the shop had no issues with it (that time).

Turns out my suspension is fine this was all a false alarm. The shop was selling me on something I didn't need. I finally fixed it this evening, they'd miss aligned the steering wheel in the alignment, their excuse was bad tie rods. All the crossmember, tie rods, idler and pitman arm are in perfect shape.

I should say for what it's worth, for OEM fitment parts the Mevo Tech TTX line has held up well. I thoroughly work my truck off road. That said, I suspect when I have problems will likely be the inner tie rod. I'm also little curious if anybody has ever busted a center link on stock suspension. Definitely don't want to find out but has been on my mind to carry a spare with what I do as I'd be stuck if that breaks. I had been carrying a spare tie rod until I got the sleeves.

 

[Marky Dissod]

Our vehicles are old enough that we should be readily carrying certain critical, small / lightweight items in the vehicle for when the time comes to replace them,
just in case, so we don't have to wait, or pay prices that will not be going down for the forseeable future.

Tie rods tend to be the 'fuses' of the steering system; incredibly difficult to bust a centerlink - though not impossible, much more likely to just wear it out.

 

[Matthew Jeschke]

Yeah all manufacturers seem to do something similar with pencil like tie rods.

 

[Matthew Jeschke]

I ended up tieing up my suspension & steering issues. Consolidated my notes from several posts into a post online on how I configured my suspension.

My 2001 Tahoe / GMT800 4x4 Suspension Build - Matthew Jeschke

The suspension was comically worn out when I bought my well used 2001 Chevy Tahoe. I first rebuilt it with stock parts. The trails made quick work of those! I then looked into direct bolt on upgrades that have held up since for nearly 50k miles. If you are looking for direct bolt-on trail...

matthewjeschke.com

 

[Marky Dissod]

I ended up tieing up my suspension & steering issues. Consolidated my notes from several posts into a post online on how I configured my suspension.

My 2001 Tahoe / GMT800 4x4 Suspension Build - Matthew Jeschke

The suspension was comically worn out when I bought my well used 2001 Chevy Tahoe. I first rebuilt it with stock parts. The trails made quick work of those! I then looked into direct bolt on upgrades that have held up since for nearly 50k miles. If you are looking for direct bolt-on trail...

matthewjeschke.com

The suspension was comically worn out when I bought my well used 2001 Chevy Tahoe. I first rebuilt it with stock parts. The trails made quick work of those!
I then looked into direct bolt on upgrades that have held up since for nearly 50k miles. If you are looking for direct bolt-on trail tested suspension upgrades then read on.

Compared to GM OE, did you find the additional costs reasonable? Were there any upgrades that 'stung a bit' in terms of price?

Thankfully I never bent a tie rod. If you bind up your steering against a rock you can bend the factory rods.
With all this in mind I tried the following and seems to have worked well since:

Kryptonite Tie Rod Sleeves
Moog Problem Solver inner tie rods
Mevotech TTX outer tie rods

Above is a picture of the setup with about 50,000 miles on it. It has worked VERY well for factory fitment upgrade. When these go bad I may spring for the Kryptonite tie rods.

Just curious: do you remember what took out any part of the GM OE steering linkage?
I'm wearing mine out prematurely (no bends or breaks) by occasionally climbing NYC curbs of wildly differing heights.

 

[Matthew Jeschke]

Compared to GM OE, did you find the additional costs reasonable? Were there any upgrades that 'stung a bit' in terms of price?

The costs were probably less to be honest. If I was to go with Delco Gold or whatever is OEM now it would have cost more than the Mevotech TTX parts. Additionally, I could rebuild the control arms with poly bushings for around half what it costs to buy new control arms. The one thing I'm kicking myself over is at the time the Kryptonite Tie Rods were cheaper and I should have bought them because I only saved like $50 sleeving a new set of OEM style ones.

One thing to keep in mind is if you make it too strong you loose the "fusable link" as you call it and shift the failure to a more expensive part (e.g. the frame or center link).

Just curious: do you remember what took out any part of the GM OE steering linkage?
I'm wearing mine out prematurely (no bends or breaks) by occasionally climbing NYC curbs of wildly differing heights.

Forest service trails wore the parts out. If you haven't been on them in the southwest, it's the experience of a lifetime. They certainly put the truck through a little workout. The alignment ~ I think I knocked it out jumping the truck and going to fast over pretty rough road. I had at least one bent cam bolt and recall bottoming out the front suspension on that trip. The house brand part / non-heavy duty parts lasted roughly 10k miles of that stuff. After which I had a wrecked tie rod (ball joint) and a wrecked at least one control arm ball joint. They were really loose, to point I could hear them.

Bull Springs Road ->

Note: I drove that road with my 5.3L and had to use 4 low. The 6.0L crawls right over EVERYTHING on the that trail w/o ever using 4 low. Sucker will FLY out of a hole now. The white Jeep in that video was AWESOME but was always breaking stupid stuff so he got rid of it.

Hunter's Access ->

I don't really have many of these of just the truck / 4x4 trails. But those are two of the easier 4x4 trails. By easy, if you were SUPER careful you could maybe get a Crown Vic or something like that back in there. There's a few canyons I frequent where if you have any less clearance it's guaranteed you'll strike the frame. Some are also creek bottoms, with river rock all over them. One I was in and I can no longer find the footage. It flooded while I was back there and drove like 5 miles through a streambed. Was beyond cool.