Okay I have the famous crack. I had it welded with a piece of steel to fix and it hasnt rebroke.

The problem: went to get the car aligned and im being told I now have to cut the outer tie rod end because the gearbox is out a bit and has changed the whole geometry of the car. The piece welded on is not that thick and I wouldnt think would cause this problem. Anyone else have this problem? I didnt want to just weld the cracks and leave it. I thought adding some support would be good but is giving me more headaches. Do I need to cut the piece off or what? I definetly could use some advice here.

 

Seems to me that the plate would change the distance between the pitman arm and idler arm which would effectively make your center link too long, which would mess with your steering geometry some, but I don't see why you'd need to cut on an outer tie rod end. It never gets near your gearbox, pitman arm or center link. To me, what you're being told doesn't make much sense.

Somebody here will have a better idea what's going on.

 

This is weird. Ive never heard of any other members having to cut a tie rod/ centerlink after a frame crack. Should I just cut the piece off, weld the cracks as best I can and install a wonderbar?

 

How thick a plate did you use?

Technically the idler and the PHR should be dead parallel to each other, real world I doubt that any are, exactly. Assuming that you used something reasonable (say 10ga or 1/8” or less thick), you’ve moved the steering box over that much, LESS then the factory tolerance for that location, in other words, don’t worry about it.

Real world, a slight tie rod adjustment (probably roughly less then a full turn on each sleeve) and it will be fine, you’ll never feel the change in geometry.

 

Try another alignment shop? The steering box crack is a common problem on our cars and if it was repaired in a reasonable manner, i dont see how it should throw off adjustment that much.

Second opinions never hurt.

 

I wonder if your alignment guy meant that he was going to have to cut off your outer tie rod end off and replace it to get your alignment set.

It's not unknown for tie rods and adjuster sleeves to rust together so badly that they can no longer be adjusted.

If that's the case, he probably just wants to cut the old stuff off and replace the rod end and probably the adjuster sleeve so he can get your alignment set.

 

Not exactly sure. I'll measure tomorrow if I can. I can tell you that its not very thick at all. I was looking for a bigger piece of scrap metal because I though the one I had was too weak.

I think its bigger than that. I may have gone overboard.

I wish . I bought all new moog suspension parts and he was talking about cutting my new tie rod ends. Im 100% positive of that.

I have a feeling I may have to break out the plasma cutter on this one. I'll measure for sure though.

 

Well its little bit thicker than an 1/8". Probably have to cut it out and reweld some 10ga I guess. I didnt even think this would be an issue.

 

somewhere someone is confused, the range of adjustment on the tierod sleeves is quite large. is it possible you got the wrong tierods?? if the plate is causing this i would think it would be the passenger side tie rods, is it?

 

Im not sure which tie rod end hes talking about. I got matching part numbers for moog tie rod ends off their website and cross referenced them with an old suspension thread. They appear to be the right ones. Either way no way in hell should I have to cut tie rod ends. Ive never heard of anyone in this situation having to do that.

 

The only time I have ever found it necessary to cut a tie rod was on a '57 Chevy with a disc brake conversion, back when I was in high school (nearly 20 years ago)...the steering arms were seperate from the spindle in that appliaction, unlike an F-body, and had to be spaced in slightly to bolt up the adapters for the calipers. The outer tie rod had to be shortened slightly (maybe 1/2 inch) to get the proper alignment. It wasn't a big deal, but again I can't see why you would need to do that on an F-body unless the front subframe was already tweaked (from an accident). There should be plenty of adjustment available on a thirdgen without having to do that.

 

That scares the hell out of me... This car was in a collision over 2 years ago. The front got smashed all the way to the radiator support. Had to put it on a frame machine to fix it. I wonder if they did a lousy job and the frame is still jacked. I may be fighting something I have no control over.

Oh BTW thx for all the replies guys.