What brand of tie rod would you choose?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
Aug 5, 2010
Messages
1,072
Location
Crown Point, IN
2009 Ford Fusion, and on Rock Auto the Motorcraft, AC Delco Professional, and Moog Problem Solver brands are all about the same price for inner and outer tie rods. I am thinking of going with Motorcraft but I would also like to hear BITOG has to say.
 
I'd prob go with the Motorcraft. I mean the old ones only lasted what 250k miles on that car?
 
Originally Posted By: SatinSilver
I'd prob go with the Motorcraft. I mean the old ones only lasted what 250k miles on that car?


Yes sir! The tech at the Ford quicklane would not perform a wheel alignment because the passenger side has some play. Sure enough when I checked it today I can confirm play in the passenger side.
 
for the same price, Motorcraft, unless there was something wrong with the original design and they fail a lot, in which case go Moog. But barring that, Motorcraft
smile.gif
 
Motorcraft is a 2 year warranty. It's good, but Moog is lifetime so I'd go Moog.
 
If available, I would select something with a fitting, like the moog problem solver. If greased periodically, you will likely never have to change that tie rod again. I would never get a sealed joint because they don't last. Those sealed oem parts are likely shot before 60k miles on a ford.
 
Last edited:
Your joking right? I see them all the time with well over 150K and some of them 20 yrs old living in pothole city and still okay.
Fittings are old tech that isn't better tech, their time has come and gone decades ago. Moog themselves are finally getting modern offering Euro style retained and integral boots with no fitting.

If you think greasable joints will last the life of the car your kidding yourself or you haven't worked in the business very long. At one time all suspension and steering parts had zerks yet we replaced them all the time, much more than today's LFL parts. How come?

BTW GOF (grease, oil, filter) was the norm at garages every 3K back then,
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: MaximaGuy
Moog are excellent, they are done with love.
OEM are OK but doesn't justify the premium


Its like the comedy hour here.
crazy2.gif
crackmeup2.gif
 
Trav, just because they have 150k on them doesn't mean they're tight. I never had a greasable joint ever go bad and have had OEM front ends go bad before 60k on ford's E150'S and F150'S. Once that seal dries up, the OEM joint is going to fail.The industry is full of blowhards who gloat about their time in the industry and question others. The blowhards are legends in their own mind.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: Trav
Originally Posted By: MaximaGuy
Moog are excellent, they are done with love.
OEM are OK but doesn't justify the premium


Its like the comedy hour here.
crazy2.gif
crackmeup2.gif


and you are the comedian..
 
Flattery will get you nowhere but I guess that's easier than answering the question. Moog has some of the worst boots on the market on their greasable joints.
Ford was known to have ball joint issues on some vehicles but it was not the technology that was bad they produced a bad part and ran with it.
The ones I was talking about at 20 years old were tight and still are they are 21 now. I sent a 95 Tercel to the yard with tight original joints, its common.

So tell me why much of the work we did back then was replacing greasable joints? BTW if the boot dries up and cracks on any joint greasable or not the joint is screwed.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: Lubener
The industry is full of blowhards who gloat about their time in the industry and question others. The blowhards are legends in their own mind.


If you need to light your hair on fire and stoop to this sort of stuff instead of presenting a valid argument you already lost.

The proponents of greasable joints claim they allow the old grease to be flushed out and replenished which is a valid argument when greases were not capable of very long life. The problem with that is by its very nature the greasable part must be either be vented or have a looser fitting boot, either way it can allow dirt and water ingress.

The problem with this is today many vehicles have very long service intervals with OCI 15K and more making service almost an annual thing not every few months.
If the vehicle operates in a climate that has salt, snow, ice lots of rain these contaminates can have up to a year to work on the joint before seeing grease again and get flushed out.
Lets face it most owners are not Bitog members and are not going in for a grease job every few months, most probably don't even own a grease gun. The fact is with a good properly attached boot system and long life modern synthetic greases there is no reason the joint should wear out, keep the contaminants out and grease in and wear is minimized.

Course if you use a bad boot or inferior lube the part will fail as it did with a few companies but seldom on a Euro or Japanese cars. Many MB taxis are running around with hundreds of thousands of Km on the originals.
 
I have so far never needed to replace an OEM sealed tie rod end or ball joint my cars before 150K and that is a good service life in my honest opinion. I have had control arm bushings, struts, ect fail but not a tie rod or ball joint. This Fusion has 250K on the clock and it is not the outer tie rod that is wearing out but the inner has some play and I am surly not going to reuse 250K outer tie rod ends when they are cheap.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top