Steering: Drag Link Replacement

At about 40,000 miles, the Sportsmobile developed loose steering, with a play of about 3 inches. Having someone wiggle the steering wheel while looking underneath revealed the problem to be the joint where the drag link attaches to the right front wheel knuckle.

It could not be tightened. Turning the nut just turned the whole bolt.

Because I've been frustrated with my mechanic lately, I decided to fix my loose steering by replacing the drag link myself.

I ordered the parts from rockauto.com . For my 2004 van, Sportsmobile used for the 4x4 conversion Ford Motorcraft drag link parts from F-Series trucks (and Ford Excursion). The two halves of the drag link are parts MDOE8 and MEOE130 .

Getting the old rusted hardware off turned out to be the hardest problem. To remove the nut from the drag link bolt, I first tried scoring the bolt end with my angle grinder and gripping it with vise grips or a wrench. Still, that didn't work — I applied a huge amount of force but it wouldn't give.

So, I finally ended up just cutting through the nut & bolt to get it off.

The other end came off fine using a pitman arm puller.

Here are the new & old parts. Disassembling the rusted old drag link also required a huge amount of force. I cheated, adding a long pipe to the end of my vise grip's handle — but, still it was slow work.

Time to put the new parts on! I realized that I was now missing a nut. The castle nut is a metric thread part not found at my local auto parts store — so off to Tacoma Screw . They have everything!

Finally, reassembly was easy. The middle piece of the drag link is rotated (with vise grips) to adjust the centering of the steering wheel.