Over the past several months the steering of my 87 GT was not as sharp as it once was years ago. In the past I've replaced the shocks, inner and outer tie rods, lower ball joints and wheel bearings all for maintenance reasons. Today I had the chance to take a look for the problem and what I found was surprising. I thought the problem may be the inner rack bushing but when I removed the bellows that cover the inner tie rods I was surprised to find water coming out and a bunch of rust. The joints and the shafts of the tie rods were rusty. The passenger’s side tie rod has a significant amount of play that I believe is leading to loss of feel in the wheel. When I replaced the inner tie rods I used a cable tie rather than a clamp on the rack end and nothing on the shaft end of the tie rod. I believe the water getting into bellows was a issue with how I installed the parts rather than the quality of the parts.
What did I do wrong when replacing the inner tie rods
