Heims and "safety washers" Qs

I'm using heims on my steering.
My drag link heims I'll be using high misalignment spacers, they make it a good bit wider and space the mounting surface away from the joint.

For my tie rod, I'll be driling out the knuckles to accept 5/8" bolts using heims here as well. My question is... are the heims just sandwiched to the bottom of the knuckle by the nut?? I have these "safety washers" that I ordered from Ballistic Fab, they have a tapered side - how do they go??
Does the safety washer's tapered side go against the heim or does the flat side go against the heim?
What exactly do these things do??

They go on the outside, between the heim and the nut that retains it. Probably tapering out - but I'm not sure.


They're so that if the heim slops up to the point that the ball can come out of the body, whatever you connected with them won't totally fall apart.

I gots ya. Seems like the tapered side should be toward the heim side, and the nut tightens down against the flat side.

Yes the tapered side goes towards the heim. If the ball pops out it keeps the end from being able to come off over the nut or bolt head.

The taper also is so the body of the hiem doesn't hit as it moves. Depending on the missalignment spacers you have you may be able to use a standard washer which would keep the height down some. I run high missalignment joints on the drag link and I just ground the circomference of the washer down where it contacted.

I'm not sure which missalignment spacers you are using but try and keep the spacers down to the minimum needed to keep the body of the heim from hitting at full travel. On my D30 I only needed 5/16" high spacers with the drag link connected directly to the knuckle. I don't suggest running both the tie rod and drag link on top because of the leverage it puts on the bolt. Though it's not hard to weld a bracket to the knuckle so it can be mounted in a double shear.

Also I would suggest getting bolts long enough to use a standard nut and then put a lock nut on as a double nut. I've never had the lock nuts (nylock or steel) stay tight.

Porch Puppy's: http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/122673666YTKbXM?start=12


Goatman's: This is basically how I had mine setup. I think it does the best at keeping the tie rod up. It's basically the stock style steering.
http://fototime.com/ftweb/bin/ft.dl...1-4FB5-8897-34491FC0F610}&inv=383E99C5633A988

This illustrates why to use the safety washers.

This happened 15 minutes into a 3 day run. Just think, 20 minutes before we'd have been on pavement at speed.

Yikes. Makes me wish I got TREs.

Just run safety washers and you will be fine.

What heims are those? They look way too light weight. Also why isn't there a jam nut on the tie rod.

Another point. Make sure you don't overflex the joint. Results similar to cal's will happen after a while. Even with quality joints.

I don't like anything under about 30,000 lbs breaking strength.

I can't tell you what heims they are, that's not my rig. I run TRE's like a goodboy.

DirtyMJ said:

They go on the outside, between the heim and the nut that retains it. Probably tapering out - but I'm not sure.

Click to expand...

The tapered end goes toward the heim. If you put the tapered part up to the heim it allows for some rotation of the joint. If you put the flat end, it doesn't rotate as much. If you have spacers, put the washer up to the spacers. Looking at it installed beneath the knuckle, it should look like this from the bottom, up: bolt head, safety washer bevealed side up, spacer (if you are using it), heim, spacer, knuckle. Any other questions just PM me.