I was actually going to buy from Phil. His prices are very competitive, and as far as I'm concerned, his good reputation makes the difference over one or two other sites which _may_ be 5 bucks cheaper. I'm just going to hold off ordering until I get the tie rods done.....

Tie Rods DONE!

I finished the tie rods over the weekend. It was a relatively easy job - I'll be doing a writeup in a few days. Pheewww. The tie rod balljoints were somewhat squished on one side when I installed and tightened the tierods, that's all. I do need an alignment, but I don't know if I should wait until I do the rear thrust arms in about two weeks.......

Notes:

Took me ages to jack up the car with the stock MB jack, install jack stands, remove the tires, replace the tires, etc. I should look into air tools, but no $$$ at the moment.

The actual tie rods took about 2-3 hours combined. Most of the time was spent turning bolts, hammering, etc.

The previous night, I had sprayed liquid wrench on the tie rod nuts. It was really easy to undo the nuts the next day, using a 17" breaker bar.....

Rest in the writeup!! And a big thank you to everybody for their help and encouragement. Watch this space for thrust arm replacement!!