Well I lucked out. It was just the nut that was stripped. I must have put it on with tie rod at too much of an angle. Anyway, much ado about nothing. I disccovered why they don't use castle nuts and cotter pins -- because the whole tie rod will shift will spin with the nut unless you hold the shaft with the allen. So there was no way that nut could have backed off that i could tell. I tried loosening it without holding allen and it just spun the shaft.
Anyway , i backed the nut off, put a new one on with red locktite and it tightened right down. Hooray. I can't believe I'm a better mechanic that Firestone techs
I'm never going there again. Plus on my wagon which has the lifetime alignment , the front tires are balding on outer edges. Is that normal if you don't rotatate tires?