Putting that stupid Mazda 3 back together, finally, that I did a clutch job on for a friend and the last bit of trouble I ran into before the rain hit last night was the tie rod end. Trying to tighten the nut on the passenger side tie rod end where it connects to the steering knuckle and the whole stud just spins. I tried tapping it into place to seat it and hold it in place to no avail. Got any tips for this?
Run a tap to clean the threads, seat the ball joint and hold, use an impact to tighten.
That almost always works for me.
Using the jack to apply some pressure has always worked for me.
Does it have an allen wrench fitting on top?
I have, in a pinch, used a floor jack to push the tie rod end upwards into the taper to keep it from spinning.
Robbie wrote: Run a tap to clean the threads, seat the ball joint and hold, use an impact to tighten. That almost always works for me.
This is my technique and if that doesn't work then I grab the stud just below the spindle with a pair of needle nose locking pliers.
This is the main reason i have giant channel-locks. They are cheap at Harbor Freight and Northern Tool and work wonderfully for squeezing tapered joints together while you tighten the nut. If the tie rod end faces up instead of down the floor jack thing is going to be less fiddly, but i did most of my work on lifts over the past decade and the channel-locks always got me through.
Make sure the tapers are clean and dry, I like to pull a rag through the hole. If that fails just push on it with a prybar to hold it in while you run the nut down.
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