Passat tie rod ends

Look on

or the passat forum on

Bill

Easy thing to do figure 1 hour labor time.

Depending on the date the car was built they is a recall on the tie rod ends. Follow this link, and plug in you information.

Weldon Cimbrik '99 Passat 1.8T 5spd '99 Beetle 2.0 5spd

This time with the link.

Depending on the date the car was built they is a recall on the tie rod ends. Follow this link, and plug in you information.

The tie rod ends that were under the recall were aluminum, so if a magnet sticks to them they already been replaced. The replacements were made of steel.

Thanks for the replies folks.

The magnetic test revealed the ends were steel. I can only guess that since this 99 was a very late 99 they may have started using upgraded tie rod ends. Or this was a second set of tie rod ends and they only lasted a short time, car has only 71k on it.

Basically it appears the failure wasn't really due to the joint, but rather the boot tore on both sides and left the joint wide open for dirt.

I was only able to find one site with instructions on replacement.

Never having replaced tie rod ends on a VW, I was able to do it myself in about an hour. I lost an hour of time having to truck to the home depot to buy a blow torch to get one end loose. Other than that it was pretty un-eventful. Going to take it in for an alignment. I tried using an adjustable square to measure the length of each end before un doing it, but I would imagine its probably close, but off. Another mystery is the tightining torques, I don't have a manual yet so I just torqued it down to where it felt like it should be.

Don't think you can go wrong with the "till it feels good" thing.