2003-07 Cadillac CTS Front 8 Piece Steering & Suspension Kit TRQ PSA59020

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Hi. I'm Mike form 1A Auto, and I hope this How-To video help you out. The next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com.

To test your tie rod, what you'd want to do is lift one of your front wheels up and grab it by the sides of the tire there and kind of move it back and forth. If you feel play more than just the steering rack moving back and forth, then that's usually your tie rod is bad.

Tools you'll need are jack and jack stands, 18mm and 19mm sockets, a ratchet with a pipe or a breaker bar for some extra leverage, two large adjustable wrenches, 8mm and 18mm wrenches, tie rod fork, and a torque wrench, as well as a large hammer.

Start out by removing the front wheel, and if you don't have air tools like I do you'll want to loosen the lug nuts with the wheel on the ground, then raise your vehicle with a jack, support it with a jack stand and take the wheel off the rest of the way. Turn the wheel to make it easier to access the tie rod. Okay. So before you disassemble the tie rod, what you want to do is you want to measure from a fixed point, which I'll choose the end of the boot right here, then you want to measure to the middle of the tie rod. Okay. So, again, you're measuring from a fixed point on the rack itself, which is this clip here, to the middle of the tie rod. And you're going to set your new tie rod up that same length.

So here I just take a couple of measurements to make sure. Mine are measuring eleven and three-eighths, but it's obviously going to be different for each vehicle. Okay. Now, the tie rod is held in. There's a lock nut here. You need to grab that with a large adjustable wrench, then hold onto the tie rod itself in that slot and loosen that lock nut. Then there is a little nut here that holds the stud on, and then you need to separate the tie rod from the steering.

You put one arm through the nut here, this bolts onto the tie rod. Turn that nut about a quarter of a turn. This bolt is 18 millimeters. Take an easy way out ... so if you don't have an impact wrench you'll want to use a breaker bar or a ratchet with a piece of pipe to give you some extra leverage. Now, here, you can use either a tie rod tool only because there is limited clearance between the tie rod and the vacuum plate here. I'm actually going to use a fork. You just basically drive this fork right in that separates the tie rod and the steering knuckle.

Once you get the tie rod separated from the steering knuckle, you just turn it counter clockwise and get it off of the steering rack. Okay. The new tie rod from 1A Auto comes with a bolt, take the bolt off, and you put it back on.

Okay. It is kind of a reverse procedure. You thread the tie rod in, measure from the same point, from the end, I chose the end of the boot on the rack, make sure it measures the same distance. I take a couple of measurements. Make sure you do not twist the shaft that comes out of the steering rack because that also will change your alignment.

Speaking of alignments, we do recommend that you have an alignment performed after you do a replacement like this. Once you have the measurement correct, then you can put the tie rod back into the steering knuckle and start the bolt on there.

Okay. Now, that nut is a lock nut, so what you will want to do, or what I'm doing here, is holding the stud of the tie rod with a 8-millimeter wrench, and then using an 18-millimeter wrench to tighten up the nut.

Okay. So once I've gotten the 18-millimeter wrench tight, I grab another wrench, hook it on there, and just give it another good pull, tighten it up more before I torque it.

When I torque it to 65-foot pounds. Now, you want to put your wrench on the inner tire rod and get this locking nut back out against the outer tie rod, and then lock onto the outer tie rod and tighten so it will lock up against it.

Okay. Now, you can turn your wheels back straight, and then put your wheel and tire back on, start the lug nuts by hand first, then just preliminarily tighten them. Okay. With the car back on the ground, set your torque wrench to 90- to 95-foot pound and tighten your lug nuts using a star pattern as your guide.

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