How to Replace Outer Tie Rods 2000-06 Chevy Tahoe 2nd Generation

Before you start, you wanna be aware that after you're done this job, you're gonna wanna go to an alignment specialist so that you can have the vehicle aligned so you don't wear out the tires prematurely.

I'm gonna remove the wheel. Use a 22-millimeter socket, take the lug nuts off. And take the wheel off.

I'm gonna loosen up the jam nut. You can use a 22-millimeter wrench or a 7/8 wrench. Just get that loose. That's good. I'm just gonna spray a little rust penetrant on here. Gonna use an 18-millimeter socket, take this nut off. And if the nut doesn't come off and the stud starts spinning, you can use an 8-millimeter socket to hold that stud from spinning and then just use the wrench to take the nut off. Now you can take a hammer and just give a tap on the bottom of the tir rod or take a pickle fork and separate it this way. Just if you use a pickle fork, it's probably gonna rip the boot right here. So I'm just gonna give it a hit right here. There we go. And now we're gonna take the outer tie rod off. As we unscrew this, just count the threads. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 23, 24. So write that number down and when you go to put it back together, you're gonna count them to put the other one in the same position that that one was in.

And take the new tie rod end. Get this started. Make sure you count. One, 2, 3, 4, 5, 22, 23, 24. And line this up in the knuckle. Take the castle nut. Get that started. Now what you can do is to prevent the stud from spinning, you can take a prybar. Just pry in between the knuckle and pry down on the tie rod. Use an 18-millimeter socket and tighten this up. And tighten this to 37 foot-pounds. And then just check to see where the stud...where the hole is for the castle nut and if you need to, you can snug it up a little bit more to get it to line up. And that hole lines up. Now take the cotter pin, slide it through. Should slide through this way. And take some side cutters and just bend it. Just tap it out of the way. And then trim off the excess. And we'll snug up the jam nut. And tighten that to 50 foot-pounds.

Put the wheel back on. And the lug nuts. Now we're gonna tighten these lug nuts down to 140 foot-pounds and I'm gonna do it in a cross pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again, double-check.