How to Replace Inner Tie Rods 2002-09 Dodge RAM 1500

Okay, friends, to get started on this vehicle, the first thing we wanna talk about is safety. You want hand and eye protection. Secondly, you wanna make sure that you raise and support the vehicle by the frame so the suspension is hanging. Next, let's remove our lug nuts. Remove your wheel. Now that we have the wheel off, we have a nice, clear view of our tie rod ends. Just a quick note, whenever I'm replacing tie rod ends, I usually like to do them as a pair. With that said, let's break free our jam nut. Here, we are.

Let's get our locking cotter pin out of here. Here we are. Let's go ahead and remove this nut. Put that back on a couple of threads. The next thing we're gonna do is separate the tie rod end from the knuckle itself. You can do that with a couple loving bonks, with a hammer. Unscrew the outer tie rod end and make sure you count the threads as you come off, 1, 2, 3 and so on. 22 for me. The next thing we need to do is remove our jam nut from our inner tie rod end. I'm gonna hold that inner tie rod end with some locking pliers.

Next, we're gonna remove the clamp that holds our Bellows boot to the inner tie rod end. So now if you follow your boot towards the inside where your power steering rack is, you're gonna find that there's a little lip right here. You're gonna wanna just kind of have a nice pry bar like this and a hammer, and we're gonna break that free. It's not reusable, so you're gonna have to replace it with something different. Now, let's go ahead and grab onto that boot. Give it a nice twist to break it free. And we're gonna try to pull it off of the inner tie rod end. There it is.

Double check your boot, make sure it's not worn or torn in any way. If it is, you'd wanna replace it, this one looks great. Now we have to unscrew our inner tie rod end from the rack itself. To do that, you can use a tool that looks like this. It's just gonna go around the bobble down here. Or of course you can use pliers or even a wrench. Whatever you need to do, unscrew it. Okay let's get this off of here. Now that that's off, I always like to clean up the mess that might be around the area, clean up the threads and then of course around it. Time to start in our new inner tie rod end. I like to use a little bit of threadlocker, but we'll call it your prerogative.

Once you have it bottomed out, just make sure you go ahead and give it a little snug. Your inner tie rod end came with some grease. You're gonna use that right along this area right here and then a little bit on the inner tie rod and shaft. I like to use a nice brush I don't like to get it on my hands. Just pack it right in there and make sure it's nice and lubricated and then some right up along this groove right there. That's where the boot's gonna sit. This is gonna help your alignment be professional. The next thing we need to do is prepare our boot so it can be mounted. Take a nice wire tie, I'm just gonna start right on here. Here we are, not too tight. Do the same on the other side, if you're not reusing your clamp, take your boot. We're gonna slide it right on there. Slide it over the rack so you're sure it's nice and secure. That feels good.

We're gonna slide this forward end so it goes over that little lip. You can see it right there, put it right up against it. Perfect. Make sure your boot's sitting perfectly on the rack. And now we're going to snug everything up. Trim from off the excess. Next, we're gonna put a little bit of grease or copper, never seize on the threaded area here. Go ahead and put on your jam nut, put it halfway down the threaded area. Time to put on the outer tie rod end. Make sure you put on as many turns as you did to remove the original 1, 2, 3, and so on. That should line up perfectly. If it doesn't you might've moved this a little bit, or you might be off. Snug this up, torque this to 45 foot-pounds.

Now we need to take a look and make sure that the slotted area of our nut lines up with the hole in the tie rod stud, if it doesn't, you need to continue tightening until the first one does. Go ahead and pin that over. Now, it's gonna be time to tighten our jam nut. To do that, you wanna hold your tie rod so it can't spin because you don't wanna damage the ball and socket area. Now let's go ahead and snug this. There we go. If your tie rods crooked, just make sure you straighten it out so it's level with the ground. Go ahead and put the wheel back up on here. We're gonna start all of our lug nuts and then we'll torque them to 130 foot-pounds. Torqued.