Auto Work Today

My grandson recently bought a used 1998 expedition to replace the durango that the insurance company kept after his fender bender.

When we read the ad, it said it had some minor things to do to it.

We knew the ac was leaking and the heater core was bypassed and a few other things, but he bought it because it was better than most for the price.

Today he came up to replace inner and outer tierod ends. Simple job right?

Jacked up the passenger side, wheel off, got the inner and outer tierod assembly off. Took about 15 minutes total. I was pleased. 

Then my grandson made the fatal mistake, and I wasn't quick enough to stop him.

He said, "That went a lot easier than I thought it would!" And i screamed and gnashed my teeth and cried tears of frustration and said what did you do?

He looked at me like I was crazy, which my wife does several times per day. I think she has a quota or something.

I said you have jinxed us because you said it went better than you thought.  Now everything will go bad! He looked at me like I was crazy.

Well, look who was proven correct! We were only going to replace the tierod ends and reuse the connecting sleeve between the two. Well, guess what? The new parts don't thread into the old sleeve. And new hardware, such as new locknuts and cotter  pins were not provided in the boxes. 

So, back to O'Reillys he goes. Come to find out, the installation instructions that came in the new parts boxes he got, which were not in the ones that we had, state that the new tierod ends cannot be used with the oem connecting sleeve. Huh?? WTF?? So he got new connecting sleeves as well. Or maybe they are called adjusting sleeves?

So, we put the new assembly on, measured out to the same dimension as the old one, and the tire is pointed to the right about 4 inches. So we fought that for an hour to get it straight. Then to the other side to replace that. The nut for the inner rod end was seized and took us about 30 minutes to remove.

Anyway finally got it all done. But I warned him, Don't ever say anything about how good it's going again! It's Dangerous!