EAG Front Fenders: Involuntary Transitioning and Lost in Translation

[Mad Mac]

This morning, I took off the wheels, again,
and removed the bent tie rod.
It went much easier than I expected.
Anointing the lug nuts and tie rod ends
with PB Blaster every day
for the previous few days may have helped.

Using a digital bathroom scale
that measures to the nearest half pound
I learned two things.
First, the OE tie rod weighs about 4 pounds.
Second, I need to lose weight.

This picture shows how much the fender bender
bent the skinny OE tie rod.

The Rough Country tie rod from Extreme Terrain
weighs about 8 pounds.
It has proper flats to use a real wrench
instead of a pipe wrench
and jam nuts instead of dinky clinch bolts.

A solid bit of kit, it is. But wait, there's more.
The instructions said a silver right hand jam nut
and a black left hand jam nut were included.
The two nuts in the plastic bag were both silver,
so I approached the next step with caution.
(Don't get ahead of me here.)

Careful trial and error and inspection
determined that neither nut was left hand.
Fortunately, I determined that fact before
fuzzing up the threads on the ball joint.

While I was at it, I decided to identify
the left hand end of the 8 pound tie rod
and check the threads on the ball joint.
An undocumented feature is that
the left hand end has a small hole in the side.
In my opinion, it's only function
is to identify the left hand end.
Trial and error would be no fun
with 8 pounds of tie rod.

All of this was done on the driver side
where the tie rod is much easier to get to
and that is also the left hand thread end.

So I ordered a jam nut from Extreme Terrain,
not blaming them but explaining the problem.
Then I filled out a sternly worded
contact form to Rough Country.

 

[Mad Mac]

Waiting for the jam nut gave me the chance
to tidy up the wiring.
I had quickly thrown it together
in an ugly tangle
to get the lights working.

The local auto parts store in my small town
had some stuff.

I drilled out the mounting holes in the little clamps
so I could use them with the existing bolts in the new fender.

 

[TheBoogieman]

Now you're going to bend the tie rod ends with that RC tie rod.

 

[Mad Mac]

Extreme Terrain gave me an in store voucher to use
because of the wrong handed jam nut that came with the tie rod.
Which was handy because I used the voucher
to purchase the Extreme Terrain jam nut their web page said was
"Engineered for the 97-06 Wrangler TJ".

That was not true. It is 7/8-inch, far too large, and intended
for the heavy duty Extreme Terrain tie rod ends they sell.
To their credit, they gave me another voucher to use.
Curiously, they did not offer to send an OE jam nut.

Now I referred to the written instructions
that came with the Rough Country tie rod
which I confirmed screws into the tie rod ends.
The instructions said the package included
two 3/4 inch jam nuts.
So I Googled up 3/4-18 left hand jam nuts
and ordered one on eBay.

A week later it arrives and... it is also too big.
So now I figure, it must be 5/8
and order another one from eBay.

A week later, it arrives and... it is too small.
More Google searching and I finally determine
that the OE tie rod ends are 11/16-18.
I order one on eBay.

A week later, today, it arrived.
I put it on, installed the tie rod,
eyeballed the alignment,
drove to the 4x4 tire place in Palestine,
got it aligned, and on the drive back
bought some beer and celebrated.

While I was waiting all this time,
I decided to do some more Rubicon appropriation
or would it be Steinjager appropriation
and painted the Rough Country tie rod
Dupli-Color BCC0382 - Dupli-Color Perfect Match Paint.
I think this replaced Chrysler Flame Red.