EZGO tie rods wobble on lift spacers

thehill

Just lifted my 2000 EZGO TXT with the budget 4" block lift kit and after playing with the front - trying to align it straight for a few hours - I couldn't figure out why it would never stay aligned perfectly until I noticed that the tie rod ends with the grease nipple were not tight on the lift's tie rod block.

There is about 1/8" of play all around due to the castle nut not having any more thread to climb up and properly tighten the tie rod. The mini castle nut on the tie rod literally runs out of thread and becomes tight on the tie rod before it actually tightens the tie rod end bolt to the lift's tie rod block.

Any ideas on the best way to fix this? I was thinking of some washers to be used as spacers to make up for the extra room but is that too shoddy?

BGW

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cgtech

Might be, might not be. Depends on how much slack needs to be taken to get the tapered tie rod ends to fit tight. One thick washer is OK, in my opinion (only on the side with the castle nut). A stack of washers, not so good.

thehill

For now I'm using some galvanized washers they are pretty thick. Almost ~2mm in height. One side needed one washer and one side needed two.

Not so bad I guess?

agpfl

I had the same issue and resolved the same way. I actually stripped the castle nut before I realized what was going on. I had to replace my tie rod end and nut.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

thehill

Glad I'm not the only bubba who solved it this way

thehill

I had a late night thought on this.

There was a revision to the 'economy' 4" lift kit recently and the directions it came with do not reflect the change.

The old kit looks like this, with FOUR U-shaped risers for the front tie rods/shocks:



The new lift kits have only TWO U-shaped risers and now include TWO O-shaped risers as shown here (I know this photo is of a different pre-1994 kit but the new O-shaped risers are included in the post-1994 kits, now):



The directions are not clear which are for the shocks and which are for the tie rods as the photos on the printed paper included have both as the U-shaped versions.

Does anyone know which is which for the new kit? The O-shaped risers are thicker so it seems like they were having either a bending issue (shocks) or a tie rod issue as I stated in the OP but I'm not sure which is which.

thehill

Anyone installed one recently?

FL13CART

I did I had to cut the closed loop brackets to make mine work. My instructions were vague to say the least. I used the cut ones/ thicker on the tie rods.

thehill

I ended up moving the 'closed'/thicker ones to the tie rods as well and moved the thinner 'U-shaped' ones to the shocks.

It's working out much better now with no play in the steering with one washer on each side.

I didn't have to do any cutting but I did tighten the bolt holding it on so that the bracket is angled - so that it doesnt hit anything when at full turn.

FL13CART

Good deal. What size tires are you going to run?