In my own travels, I had a draglink that was made out of a stock tie rod fail under extreme use. This problem was temporarily solved by field welding a piece of 1/4" stock to my draglink after straightening it. This worked well for the rest of the trip.

This failure led me to search for stronger parts. Quite a few people recommended chromoly tubing or DOM (Drawn On Mandrel) tubing. Many chromoly tie rods and draglinks are available from the aftermarket, but their high cost and the inability to safely do field weld repairs on them kept me from using them.

Several small shops offered to sell me a piece of 1-1/8" DOM tubing with appropriate wall thickness, internally threaded for tie rod ends, for what I thought a reasonable price.

However, I heard of an idea that required nothing more than a few dollars and a few minutes of my time that would exponentially strengthen my stock tie rod. I decided to give this idea a try.

My tie rod from end-to-end was 39.5" long. By measuring the threads on my tie rods I decided that I needed to allow for 2-1/4" on each end for the tie rod to be adequately adjusted. This meant that I needed to cut my piece of 1/2" solid rod down to 35".

Since the piece of 1/2" solid stock was bare steel I knew it would rust quickly inside my tie rod. I thought of painting it but I knew that the tolerances inside the tie rod tube would scrape off most of the paint when putting the rod inside the tube, so I chose to coat the rod with anti-seize.

Once I had about 1/2 the rod sufficiently coated with anti-sieze, I put the end of the tie rod on a block of wood on the floor. I forced the 1/2" rod into the tie rod tube as best I could and drove it the rest of the way with a hammer. I added more anti-seize as I continued to drive the rod in.

Once I had the rod inside the tie rod tube and centered, I used a nail inserted into the tie rod tube to move the rod back and forth until I had the same measurement from both ends.

I then took the tie rod tube to my drill press and drilled 5 3/16" holes evenly spaced over the tie rod. The holes were drilled such that no hole was more than 2" from the end of the rod I had placed inside the tie rod tube. Also, none of the holes were on the same side of the tube. This was done to avoid causing any weak spots in the tie rod tube.

I drilled the 5 holes in the tube to a depth of about half the thickness of the rod inside the tube. By looking into the hole drilled in the rod, you can tell when you've drilled through the tie rod tube and have started into the rod. Be careful here and don't get carried away and drill too far. Patience !

By using a tape measure I adjusted the tie rod ends until I had the required 47.25" between the center of the two tie rod end bolts. Finally, I reinstalled the tie rod end clamps and tightened them snugly.

If you modify your suspension using some of these ideas, or others of your own, please let me know the results of your work. I'm interested in any refinements or other ideas you may have discovered. Happy Wheelin'