tie rod ends stuck

[parakeats]

So, I'm trying to untwist the outer tie rod ends and they're siezed solid! doing it on the floor so I also can't get masses of oh a twist on it with my vice grips.

Anyone got any tips to get these off with a pair of vice grips, heat gun and WD40? I've soaked it with rust penetrator and will try again tomorrow. Ideas appreciated

[parakeats]

just to confirm, it's the outer rod itself that I can't get off, not the ball joint

[Brianmoooore]

The ends of the rods have two slits in them, that allows the clamps to lock the thread of the rod ends in place. Slide the clamps out of the way, clean the slits up with a wire brush, and apply WD40, or other rust releaser of your choice.
Use a smallish parallel punch with a hammer to tap away at the edges of the slits, at as shallow an angle as you can manage, taking great care not to hit the threads of the rod ends, and keeping plenty of WD40 present.
As the female threaded part of the is opened up slightly by the tapping, it will suck the WD40 deep around the threads, and, with a bit of twisting over and back with the grips, a small amount of movement will develop into the threads loosening right up.
Some will advocate the use of large amounts of heat to shift the rust, but this is bad practice, can change the characteristics of the metal, and can arguably result in a MOT test fail.

[HairyScreech]

Heat works but you should never get them to the point of being red hot, that will bugger the heat treatment of the rod ends.

A lot of them are CrMo steels and red heat will destroy the temper and bring them down to an annealed state.

Generally if you heat them to the point that penetrating oil will smoke when sprayed on them and they still don't move applying more heat will not help until you get to the point of knackering the HT.