Tie rod sleeves for offroad reliability

Where do you land on sleeves like those from Warfab? $60-100 per set seems reasonable. Offers some reinforcement for the thinner threaded portion of the tie rod ans would allow a bit of deflection under load, but not enough to taco the rod.

Anywho, who runs ‘em?
Like ‘em/dislike ‘em?

 

Great idea but you make the rack the “fuse.”

 

talked to the owner and he was saying that these allow the inner tie rod to distort to some extent, just not to the extreme of making a truck un-drivable, allowing a rig to make it off the trail.

i agree though, there are no free lunches and the energy that would bend the un-reinforced tie rod has to go somewhere. Likely the next structure upstream is the rack. Beef up the rack and arms with tundra or LC100 rack parts and you start blowing tie rod mounts on the knuckle, right? lol.

Personally, i’m not 100% convinced these are needed with slow-crawling rigs with light 33’s-34’s (285/70’s-285/75’s)

 

Definitely!

When I build things in the shop (from motorcycles to furniture to whatever) I *always* make sure the "weakest link" is a part that is:

• easily accessible (e.g. - an external rod such as a tie-rod rather than an internal gear in a transmission assembly)
• simple/common (e.g. - a bushing or spacer that can easily be remade rather then part with 20 steps to build)
• inexpensive (e.g. - make sure it's the aluminum part that gives first rather than the titanium one)
• safer (e.g. - would prefer a spoke failure from thin material over a hub or rim failure that could stop forward motion)

I'd hesitate to bolster tie rods as they meet most of the definitions above IMO.

Jason