Anyone removed tie rods from aluminium knuckle?

[Woody_72]

The only thing holding me back from replacing my front shocks is disconnecting the tie rods from the knuckle. I bought a tool to do it but needless to say it doesn't fit . What I basically want to know is: do they generally come out easily with a tonk from a lump hammer or do they tend to get stuck?

 

[RUM4MO]

The thought of needing to do that would concern me a bit, my old 2000 VW Passat 4Motion was really just made up from some older Audi parts - except its front uprights were cheap steel ones and not the aluminium ones that Audi used, though I now have that in my current car a 2011 Audi S4, so working on that could get a lot worse than just getting these parts out of your car.

I'd be scrubbing them up to make them clean and dosing frequently with PROPER release oil/fluid, and not just usual WD40 for a week or so , before tackling that job.

 

[SuperV8]

They have a steel insert in the alloy knuckle - so should be no more difficult than a normal tie rod end in an iron knuckle.

Personally I would be using the correct size ball joint splitter tool - rather than a hammer.