So I am replacing my tie rod ends with 93LE ones. I can't for the life of me get the told ones to even budge. I have a tie rod remover/pickle fork or whatever. I have removed the pin, castle nut, and loosened the jam nut on the inner tie rod. So far, I have succesfully fubared the boot and thats about it. Please advise here...Am I missing something? any other methods to try?

So far: I have tried hitting the tie rod seperator with a 1 lb dead blow, and the flat end of a ball peen.
-I have moved on some to doing the CA bushings, so I have no problems loosening other things up if it will make it easier. I already unhooked the bottom ball joint to get the coilover out and that hasn't helped much.

Give me ideas! Here is what it looks like at this time btw:

 

Add heat and a pitman arm puller. Never bang on top of the nut.

 

Give the knuckle a good whack right where the tie rod is. Use a small sledge and hit it hard!

Heat will melt your boot.

 

stick your tie-rod end separator fork in with a couple of blows,while hitting the knuckle where it joint the tierod. the fork will act as a pry bar and the vibration from the side-hit will loosen it up

 

Hit the knuckle with a sledge. Not a miata but the first picture I found on google images.



If that doesnt work, hit it with a sledge while a friend is using a big pry bar to apply a constant force down on the tie rod nut (leave it threaded on a few turns for this method so it catches the tie rod when everything pops loose).

Edit: Oh yeah, and put your lower ball joint back in!

 

Do you by any chance care about the old boot? If you're worried about smell cut it.

 

Here's what I did.
http://revlimiter.net/blog/2011/03/tie-rod-end-swap/

No need to be worried about your old boot. Feel free to destroy it. And realize you need to hit the thing holding the rod end, not the rod end itself.

Really, about 3 whacks on the end of the pickle fork will do it.

 

So, I should put the pickle fork into it. then hit the knuckle while the pickle fork is in?
I was hitting the pickle fork earlier, but that just made it fall out instead.

I finished up the bushings, so the lower ball joint is in.

 

btw, I don't care about the boot. I have two new ones going in.


EDIT:

So I tried hitting the knuckle, and hitting the knuckle with the pickle fork in, then having my brother push down on the pickle fork and hitting the knuckle. None worked. I think I need a bigger hammer. I will go by the store and pick up a 2 lb sledge? or should I pick up a 3 lb sledge?

 

A large ball peen should be enough hammer. On the rod end, where the casting line is, hit that. No pickle fork. Hit that sucker like you're trying to crack that bitch along the casting seam. Should pop right out.

 

Get the pickle fork on there as tight as you can and then hit the knuckle. When i did that on my jeep (same design, just bigger and beefier... pitman arm) i had no luck with just the pickle fork so i got a puller on the one side, pickle fork on the ball joint side and wacked the pitman arm (kuckle on the miata) and it poped out.

 

a puller? like a 3 jaw puller?

 

I use our 16 lb sledge. Makes it a very quick and simple task.

 

hammer the pickle fork in there to get that **** stuck good, then smack the **** out of the fork. That's what I did.

 

HA! I will get the 3 or 4 lb sledge then. I will update tomorrow then!

 

I just did this last night with one of these. Turned the bolt a few times and it popped right out. The first one surprised me because it made a nice, loud pop and the tool fell to the ground. I was expecting the tool to only provide preload and having to wack it with a sledgehammer, but both sides came off easy enough with just the tool. Gray sharpie was used to mark the threads the nut was covering and I counted the number of times it took to spin off the old one. Not sure if that actually matters when the tie rod end going on is different...

 

Those are nice, but in a pinch, a 4 pound sledge works wonders. I don't even use a 1 pound hammer to drive nails anymore.

 

You're supposed to hammer THE FORK. You don't put it in and then hit something else. You hammer it in there and then you keep hammering the ****** until the ball joint pops free. That's what it's for.

 

Yep, bigger hammer got it out in less time than its taking me to post this. 4lb sledge, whack the pickle fork about 3-4 times, voila! Thanks guys, I guess I just needed motivation to buy a man's hammer!

 

yeah, a 1lbs hammer wont do. use at least a 3 or 4 pounder to wack and it should pop out after a few blows. i started with a 1 pounder on one side and it took nearly 20 wacks. the other side took 2 wacks with a 4 lbs hammer.