I used to have a 95 850 and used this site all the time to help out with my DIY repairs. I've since been driving a Saab 9-3, but definitely miss the brick. My neighbor in his infinite wisdom asked me to help him with replacing his outer tie rod. Unfortunately, he removed it without measuring the distance from the end to the start of the inner tie rod. So my question is 2 fold:

1. Can I eye ball it? (really don't like this one btw)
2. Can someone tell me what this distance should be, I'm assuming most should be relatively close.

He has an early 94 before the headlight change with a manual transmission. Also, he bought after market. He has about 180k on the originals and they still have some meat on them. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.

Craig

Examine the old tie rod and see if you can find non rusty threads, then measure from there. He will need an alignment in any case, to get it straight.

Klaus
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Always willing to listen, just not able to take direction.

That was my first thought Klaus, but yet again in his infinite wisdom he @%&!@#$@! tossed it in the trash which of course was picked up 2 days ago!!!!

Eyeballs are all you got now. I hope you don't have to drive it very far to get it aligned. Impress on the owner to drive SLOWly!!!

I don't know if you have the 1993 or 1994 suspension, they are different. Good luck.

Klaus
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Always willing to listen, just not able to take direction.

I assume he has the 93 suspension since he has the aluminum control arm. Could you measure it on yours? I assume the passenger side would be different. Is that a safe assumption?

Craig

All I have is a 1998, and comparing car to car measurements is only a 'good guess'. Just slap on the tie rod, close counts, and have the front end aligned.

I found a good alignment shop by asking some local garages where they have alignments done.

Klaus
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Always willing to listen, just not able to take direction.

Klaus's original suggestion was to eyeball the old tie rod and you said that it was thrown-away.

I think there was a mis-communication here.

I think what you want to examine for rust is the threaded portion of the INNER tie rod. The outer tie rod is of a female thread and threads over the male threads of the inner tie rod. As such, a portion of the inner tie rod thread is protected by the outer tie rod and you can usually see where the tie rod was by looking at the threaded portion of the inner tie rod.

Here in lies another issue I have with this car. When I looked at the original 1 on the passenger side, it has a lot more "meat" than the after market tie rod. After only 2 or 3 turns it seems to be spot on. Am I making sense?

Craig

I think the consensous on this board is that there are a lot of junk aftermarket suspension parts out there and you should stick to Volvo or OEM parts for suspension work.

Are you saying that the outer tie rod is positioned only two or three threads from coming off. If that is what you are saying, something is very wrong. A tie rod should not be attached with just two or three threads. No way, no how. Period.