97 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder 2.4l non turbo...175k miles
Car was just failed on state safety inspection for 'inner tie rods'. I must be doing something wrong because when I jack it up (at the frame) and try to jiggle the tire side to side/up and down it seems rock solid to me with no movement. Otherwise, car has no handling, vibration, weird sounds or pulling problems and tire wear was even after 80k. Just how do you tell if inner and/or outer tie rods are bad? Are the symptoms different for inner versus outer?
Next question after reading all the posts here about tie rods is: does it make sense to replace both inner and outer at the same time if I am going to do the inners anyway--under the assumption that if the inners are gone the outers will go soon?
Chiltons and Haynes only describe replacing (outer) tie rod ends which makes me even wonder if inners ever go (though threads here indicate otherwise) and the inspector just misdiagnosed.
