so no symptoms...rarely drive over 60.. no wiggle went to slap on winter wheels/tires and slop in inner tie rod on pass side.. crap..i dont have time for this nor a place to do. im hitting winter big time.

Will it survive the winter, assuming mostly slower driving, eg: not at highway speeds? When I discovered play in the steering in my new-to-me 4Runner (120K miles), I went ahead and had a local shop replace the rack with a new OEM rack I had purchased. Still good 10 years later.

can they go catastrophic like our ball joints, where one day it pops out and im toast ?

The design is not like the ball joint so it wont go catastrophic. Probably lost its lubrication and its wearing itself out. If its not leaking fluid just replace the inners and check the outers when you do it. You will need a specialty wrench if you do it yourself or grind down a full size wrench. Visually line the front and back of the front tire with the edge of the rear tire and that will be good enough to drive it wherever you need to go to get it aligned

If you think your rack might also need to be replaced, go with a new (errr... rebuilt) OEM rack - it includes new inner tie rods with it. When you price out new OEM inners compared to a new rack that includes them, it will make sense to do the whole thing together.

I'd say you can make it through winter without too much of a problem, as long as you won't be driving many thousands of miles. (though, I'm coming from a California winter perspective - it is still sunny and in the 80's and I was swimming in the pool with the kids this past weekend...)

-Charlie

I will prob just drive it through winter and when the snow finally builds up speeds will go down. Then spring Ill think ill look into a full front end overhaul since my cam adjusters are frozen and other bushings are looking pretty tired.

MOOG wins again

that is sarcastic, I thought I had done the inners right after I bought this, and looking at some old records sure enough in July of 2021 I did, so maybe , so 3 year and about 30k

and thats pass side, havent touched driver side and its got no wiggle to it

well im just gonna get another inner and slap it in to get me past. bugs me to have that slop in the back of my mind when driving and get me through winter. its not a long hard job and I can borrow garage space for an afternoon.

funny yet sad...shops just want to push for a entire rack. Said it for my tundra and now this one. neither loose fluid
one shop even said rebuilt rack and then bushing kit on top of it.
I can do inner, bushing kit and all the tools to align myself for under 250.
align myself...there is a thread someplace here that a guy bought camber and toe plates tools and did his own alignment. im sure it would be close enough. we dont have a firestone up here that does free lifetime alignment

Firestone no longer wants to work on lifted vehicles. They won't touch my truck and I have a Lifetime agreement with them. They will only align to stock specs and since my truck is lifted with custom parts, I'm SOL. I bought the agreement 20 years ago and the truck was lifted then with STS Upper Control Arms and SAW coil-overs. No issue at that point, but I got a big "Nope" from them now.

I had one develop a inner wiggle.. I just replaced it and check the steering every oil change. You should be fine unless it has extreme play. When does the winter start up there? September?