Today was the day I had marked in my mental calendar as the day I would replace the tie rods in my E39 530i BMW. My steering was vague and the car wandered all over the road. Over bumps, it would pull violently to one side or the other, always to the side opposite the one I had been anticipating. Today I would replace the tie rods and on Wednesday I would get an alignment and have BMW-perfect steering and handling again. However, it seems I may have gotten a bit ahead of myself.
As it turned out, I did not end up replacing the tie rods today. However, I ended my unsuccessful day of work on the car with a fit and by throwing my new vice-grips as hard as I could against the wall of the garage. Unfortunately for my anger levels, the vice-grips bounced off the cement wall and completed their journey in the bottom of the recycling bin full of returnables. I had to take a moment to breathe before going to fish them out. As you can tell, I had gone past both the ‘irritated’ and ‘angry’ thresholds and was now entering the ‘furiously breaking things’ stage. Let me explain why…
I had removed my old tie rod from the diver side of the car. This by itself was a little bit of a pain, as the Allen–fitting on the spindle-side of the tie rod had begun stripping. However, I drove to the hardware store in my mom’s car and bought myself the pair of vice-grips that I later used to throw against the wall of the garage. Luckily, these worked as a means to remove the end of the tie rod from the spindle. It was now time to put the new tie rods in. This is where the problems began.
When I tried to thread the new tie-rods back into the steering rack, I realized that the inner ball-joint wouldn’t move. Later, I found out it would but only if I wailed on it with a rubber mallet. Unfortunately, this is what led to my throwing-of-the-vice-grips-into-the-returnables-bin. I tried jacking up the suspension on that side of the car to get the control arms out of my way so I could rotate the whole tie rod assembly to thread it into the rack but nothing worked. So, I figured throwing my vice-grips would solve my problems. It didn’t.
So, I’m going to sign off today by saying that I did not finish; that the tie-rods won for today. However, I will not surrender and will make an update when I finish the job. See you then…
Update: I’ve finished installing my new tie-rods. I was very frustrated and finally decided I was just going to force the damn things in. So, I put a cloth on my jack and jacked up the driver side suspension by the brake rotors. I aligned the tie-rod with the end of the steering rack and cranked the wheel so it was held in place. I then proceeded to turn the inner tie-rod end slowly and whacked it with my rubber mallet constantly to prevent it getting out of alignment with the steering rack. After about ten minutes, I finally got the tie-rod in and attached.
I then repeated the same steps on the other side. However, I realized, after about twenty minutes of turning the tie rod end slowly to no avail, I had been turning it in the wrong direction. I switched directions and got it tightened up in less than five minutes.
Next, I did my best attempt at alignment, although it obviously wasn’t my best attempt, as I found the car to be hardly drivable when I took it out. I brought it back in, increased the toe-out on the passenger side, and took it for another spin. This time, it was almost perfect. Still, as soon as I finish this post, I will be heading to the shop and getting a professional alignment.
Unfortunately, I still have a clunking sound in my steering. This warrants further investigation, but I’m worried I might be face-to-face with a worn-out rack and pinion. While this isn’y common in 6-cylinder E39s at only one-hundred thirty thousand miles, it looks like it might be the culprit.
Exhaust Fumes 