TweederS4

alright so i have known for a while I needed an alignment done on my 01 S4. It is lowered so there aren't too many places around me that can get it on the rack. There is a good tire place literally 10 seconds from me who can so I take her there and drop her off. The guy tells me to come back in an hour and when I do it is still on the rack.
He comes up to me and says "here is the bad news. my guy has been trying to unfreeze the front tie rods this whole time with no luck. he heated them up numerous times and cannot get them to budge at all. he thinks my only other option is maybe to replace the power steering rack..."
WHAT????
he says he thinks its from when the car was lowered, which was about 6 years and 2 owners ago. are you telling me the car was never aligned after it was lowered? no way.
the bad thing is there are really no tuner shops or good suspension shops around me. i am in NJ near the delaware bridge. I was thinking maybe Autospeed in Voorhees since they did a lot of awesome work for me about a year ago.
can anyone help me with some options here? there is no way i can replace the whole front rack for an alignment problem. can the tie rods be that frozen to have to replace all of that?

donromani

Wow - he wants to replace the whole steering rack because he can't get the tie rods loose? This is what I would do: take it home, put the front end up on jacks and take of the wheels. Douse the thread for the tie rods with PB Blaster and wait a few hours and then try to loosen them up yourself.

I suppose they could seize up on you, but not being able to get them out at all - impossible.

shawnoc2003

I agree. Soooooak them.

complacentsee

Yeah, at that point use the super nasty 50/50 ATF and acetone mix. The testing shows that it works 3 or 4 times better than PB blaster. IIRC


Worst case, you would have to remove the inner tie rod ends aswell as the outer ends. But that is not that big of a deal.

TweederS4

PB blaster at say my local napa? what about the 50/50?

yea man he was like "we cant get them loose so my guy says your best bet is going to be to replace the power steering rack. if you can get someone to break them loose, come back and we will finish the job." lol thanks