New Espada center-link and tie-rods with Toyota T100 tie-rod ends
I spent some time reviewing the various recommendations for tie-rod and center link replacements and there was a lot of good information on the site including Fred's great
tutorial. Thanks to everyone who contributed. I thought I would summarize what I found
worked for my Early Series II Espada (no power steering). Now I didn't investigate every possible tie-rod end out there but I did go through the Moog catalog much as others probably did. I also concluded that the Toyota tie-rod ends from a T100 2 wheel drive truck are a pretty good fit for the taper. I didn't see any others that were.
These have a 17mm x 1.5 thread and that's a strange thread here in the USA.
I could not source 17mm x 1.5 jamb nuts so threading a piece of tubing was looking
to be a difficult solution if I couldn't find the locking nuts. Finding a RH 17mm x 1.5 tap is no problem but a LH version was a problem. For these reasons I decided to utilize a pair of the 17mm adjusting sleeves, which were readily available, insert them into a tube and weld them in place. I can now replace these rod ends when needed as well as adjust the length of the center link. Adjusting the length is not really required on my car but as long as I was going to fabricate this piece I figured I'd include that capability. You could just utilize a pair of RH threaded tie-rod ends and fix the length before installation. The sleeves I used were gold color plated but there are others that use the black plating. I
think AC-Delco also offers them.
The one thing that requires modification are the castle nuts which secure the tie-rod
ends. They are simply too tall and I have not been able to find shorter ones in a castle nut
or nylon insert lock nut configuration. The ones supplied are per the DIN standard. So I will grind them down about 1/8" shorter on the bottom.
Old versus New Center Link
Close ups of each end
New outer tie-rod using same Toyota T100 tie-rod ends and adjusting link
Summary of parts available and those utilized.
My tie-rods are close to 11" in length on center. For the outer tie-rod I ended up using the Moog piece specified for a Toyota adjusting sleeve that was 4 7/8" long. This combined with the inner and outer tie-rods end yielded a minimum length of 10 3/4". That should work for my car but if you need it shorter you can trim the rod ends and the sleeve to get another 1/4" shorter if need be. I chose the Moog adjusting sleeve because I preferred its construction. When you look at the clamps you may be able to see that they rotate when loose but they also have retaining bumps so that they don't wander all over the length of
the sleeve. There are other brands such as the ones I used on the center link that consist of a simple straight piece of pipe with a uniform diameter and a slit with two clamps.
Tie- rod ends
Moogtaper mintaper maxlength
ES2374.577".641"3.65"
ES2376.577".641"7.28"
Adjusting sleeves
Moog
ES2369S4.7" (what I used)
ES2094S5.43"
ES426S6.69"
The Moog adjusting sleeves have a larger diameter between the clamps and that's why I did not utilize them for the center link. I also used another brand of tie-rod ends that were available on Ebay for an excellent price. They were slightly shorter which gave me the 1/4" shorter length at 10 3/4" on center minimum. The chrome-moly tubing I used
was obtained from:
I utilized a piece of 1 1/8" OD x .885" ID 4130 chrome-moly which is over kill but it fit the OD of the adjusting sleeve that had to fit into the tube and be welded in place. Two feet of tube is enough and that's about $25.00.
Bob Staaterman