98 E300 W210 inner and outer tie rods - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

turbodiesel · #1 10-18-2005, 09:41 PM

Hello. I'm having a front end problem that's been getting worse. I think I've isolated it to the tie rods.

The car will clunk over small bumps and shake at above 40mph to around 70mph. The tires have been balanced several times and my mechanic assures me they are "spot on".

I got under the car with the front in the air, and asked my girl to shake the steering wheel back and forth vigorously. She could replicate the clunk, which sounds like it's coming from the center of the steering rack. I did also notice a very small amount of play at the outer tie rod joints.

I replaced the lower ball joints 15,000 miles ago trying to isolate the clunk. The upper ball joints look fine with no noticable play. I think I am in need of both inner and outer tie rod ends.

I did not look at the inner tie rods, because there is a dust boot over them from the steering rack, which has a factory clap on it. How do I replace that clamp?? Just use a regular hose clamp?

Any advise is appreicated.. thank you.

nhdoc · #2 10-18-2005, 10:06 PM

Whenever I have suspension/steering problems I rely on pros to help unless the answer is obvious. My '04 had similar noises to yours and they called it sway links or something like that and fixed it (under warranty) but my understanding is the repair would have been less than $100 if I had to pay for it.

Bring it to the dealer if you must resort to that and have them test drive or examine it on the lift and give you an estimate for the repairs, then you'll know what's wrong. Even if you have to pay for an hours tech time to debug it you'll save that in not replacing parts that are OK. Steering and suspension issues are too important to guess at and too dangerous to mess with if you don't know what you're doing, IMHO.

Will_w202 · #3 10-18-2005, 11:42 PM

Don't forget simple bushings. My lower ctrl arm bushings were bad, and my symptom was lateral motion over bumps and the sensation that the front wheels were being hit with a hammer over bumps. New bushings and all is well. In fact, once the bushings were replaced my steering wheel shook so badly I had to get the tires balanced - evidence that the arms were totally out of contact and not transmitting that much feedback to the steering wheel.