Hi everyone,

It's good to be back on the forum and have another Rover in my driveway after a bit of a break. I recently picked up a 2007 LR3 at 100k miles, and i'm working through a couple repairs and a long maintenance backlog.

I was working on replacing my tie rods yesterday when I found that the length of my existing tie rod ends don't match the replacement parts (TRW kits LR010670 and LR010669) I realized this when I counted the turns to remove the ball joint end from the linkage with the plan to reinstall at the same number of turns to keep alignment in the ballpark. The old part with the longer body took 31 turns to undo but the new part bottomed out at 24 turns, about halfway up the threaded section of the inner rod.

Has anyone seen this before? I'm assuming the parts I received are correct since they match all the pictures I can find online. My best guess is a previous owner or their shop put the wrong parts in. I know about the later 09 LR3s using the same parts as LR4 but this shouldn't apply to my 07 (those tie rod ends also look to be about the same length as my replacement parts)

On the bright side, my current tires are junk anyway so I don't really need to worry about wearing them on the way to the shop for alignment.

 

Just different manufactures. The length does not matter. Personally I would prefer more threads over less. I noticed that while I have never had an issue, the TRW ones are very sloppy when threaded onto the inners and I always feared the two separating.

 

That must be it. I looked around a bit more out of curiosity and these look a lot like the Duralast parts from AutoZone.

I didn't notice any issues with the inner-outer threads on the TRWs but I can't say i'm impressed with the quality either. It was difficult to screw down the nut on one of the ball joint studs which will make it difficult to properly torque. I'll probably splurge on Lemforder or OEM if I have to do this again.

 

FWIW I used Meyle’s tie rod ends and have been happy so far. Replaced them the summer before COVID came along.

 

Not that it matters but Lemförder is a brand owned by ZF Friedrichshafen (yes the same guys making the transmission).