Just a warning to Altezza/IS200 owners

Given that I have very minor underbody rust, this is the result of a tie rod failing. Lucky I was parking at the time but please make sure you are vigilant in maintaining your steering components! The irony is (not really irony but neither is any of the Irony in that song!) that it happened 3 days after ordering ball joints, inner and outer tie rods and link arms from Nick and it happened right out the front of a mechanic...

yeh i gotta get my ball joints changed so will be checking that too. been fearing that might happen to me

btw, that pics makes your car looks like one of the drift cars! haha

Dont risk it. Get it done, 5 minutes before I parked I was doing 90kms down the M4. I would have lost my Altezza for sure! Not to mention my life posibly but the CAR lol

So what part failed?
Did it have anything with you recentering the steering rack not long ago?

I thought it was interesting when you posted about that, I had a wheel alignment place try to tell me the same thing. But on inspection it seems they are offset from factory.

Did your tie rod fail or did it just unscrew?

They are offset from the factory? Do you know why or the benifit of this?

This isnt my IS200 though. This is from my Altezza so the ofset hasnt been changed (not by me anyway).

The thread on the tie rod spindle sheared off. Looks to me to be a stress fracture that has develloped over time and has weakened from rust (coulnt imagine by much though as it is only surface pitting).

At no time did my car violently shudder or crack but has been clunking on low speed manouvers over the last week which is why I had orderd my front end parts from Nick. I assumed the ball joints were failing but they are still intact unlike my right tie rod end!

I havent touched these bolts ever but I have a torque wrench and I know how to use it Thanks RAAF :) so ill be getting under there and re torquing and changing relavent bolts when I do my front end this weekend, coventry better be open on Saturday unlike last time I went to Alexandria!

I don't KNOW anything really, just had a little panick when told by a workshop it was in the worng position. Then on inspection by myself it is clearly located correctly, perhapps not in the geometric center of the car but it IS where the factory intended.

Alarming that it could sheer off. The ball joints are unlikely to fail completely ever - just become very noisy.
Also surface pitting would not contribute much to fatigue in a 8mm+ diameter bar of solid steel.
The lower control arm rose joints in the rear become noisy, but there is no easy fix. Buy entire rear knuckle - or machine up custom ones.

Thats exactly what I did when I got told of my rack centering and i only had about 10-15 threads left on my right side. The inner tie rods are of equal lenght so there should be no reason they are off centered on purpouse at least that was my thinking at the time so my concern quickly turned to anger at the wheel alignerwho did it 3 months earlier (needless to say they didnt follow my instruction in the first place nor did they provide data on what they did at my request).

I guess some very rich engineer at Toyota made this decision so I dont know. Maybe they centered the rack after the interior was assembled and the steering wheel was put on and found it a waste of time to center everything? No other car I have owned has been off centered in this way

Do you remmeber what side yours was on Matt?

Don't recall. IT was a few years ago, and when we looked at it next it was quickkly dismissed as an issue.

On any bolt/nut, to be confident of its strength you need the equivalent of its diameter in thread covered by the nut (this is from the ANDRA handbook and covers cars faster than 6.99s for the 1/4 = good enough for me). This requirment can easily be met even though the tie rod arms are equal length and the rack offset.

I can't see any surface rust having an effect, this was either faulted from manufacture (unlikely) or smacked in a pothole/kerb somewhere in its life.

Damm lucky Winnie! I hope you bought a lottery ticket!

Go my ticket for the lotto 30 something million would be nice :)

Yea thats a general engineering practice Matt that LAME's use as well but I guess I was more concerned with the rack being off center. I guess I'm a little pedantic with these things for ^^^ obvious reasons lol

Its not the first time something crazy like this is happened to me, in my Celica ST184 I broke the end off the CV right where the split pin goes through and didnt know untill it was too late because the wheel covers made it impossible to see. A strangely enough itimitant rattle drove me insane for weeks but I never took the wheel off. I even had it at our family mechanic who told me the wheel bearings had gone 3 days before it fell apart. I checked for play in every bush and every link and every bolt but nothing. Then one day the enevitable. The axle nut came loose and I was off the road!