[GTA67]

I've got a 67 GTA with front disk brakes. The origional 4 piston calipers were replaced with the two piston type like found on the 68 and up models. Anyway, when I rebuilt my front end and took the car for an alignment the mechanic said my tie rod ends weren't correct. The threaded part of the tie rod ends wouldn't allow the mechanic to righted down enough to be snug before the threads bottomed out. Well this mechanic puts about 1/4 inche of spacers on the threaded end to enable him to tighted the tie rod to the spindle. That was a couple hundred miles ago and now the steering seems to be binding and the rubber boots around the tie rod end are destroyed. My question is if the I have wrong tie rod ends what are the corrent ones? Could this be a result of changing the breaks over to the two piston type? Did I get the wrong ones origionally. I noticed that in the parts catalogs the same tie rod ends fit the 67 & 68. Any thoughts are appreciated.

 

[gwstang]

Are you saying the tie rod ends are too long? why couldn't he just cut off a couple of threads so they would fit??? I had to cut off about an inch on my outer tie rods to fit...I am sure that someone with much more expertise will chime in so stand by!!!

 

[289fan]

That is wht it sounds like. Not all tie rod ends (TREs) have the same taper, and the TREs have have had the wrong taper and over time have wollowed out the spindle socket allowing the TRE to sink deeper into the spindle. In time the wobble would tear up the boots and the front end would get looser with each drive. I hope this isn't the case, because now, the spindles may be shot as well as the TYEs.

 

[kevinstang]

Any idea what spindle casting numbers are? The spindles from 1970, 1971-1973 will fit the same ball joints and look pretty much identical to the 68/69, but take a different outer tie rod end. There is also the possibility someone used Granada spindles- the caliper mounts differently and is larger than the caliper found on 68-73 Mustangs. The 68-73 Mustang caliper floats on two pins/bolts, while the granada style caliper uses a slide wedge with one bolt to lock wedge on bottom.