The tie rod shanks are 3/4-16. I drilled and tapped in in my lathe.
I bought a tap that was for a class 3 fit which is tighter than standard class 2, per recommendation of aerospace engineer friend There is some fancy nomenclature on good taps which denotes the class fit etc. I forgot what is was though, but there is more variation than i expected
The drill size is 11/16. The tubing was 1" with 3/16" wall, so the ID was 5/8. You can get tubing with 11/16 ID but the surface is very hard from the drawing process which makes tapping even worse.
Drilling was easy enough but tapping was a B###H! The close thread fit required a lot of torque to tap. I used the lathe to start, but it didnt et too far. I ended up using 20" crescent wrench to turn the tap, to the lathe did make a good workpiece holder.
The end result was an excellent fit with no detectable side-side play. I notched the tubing in my milling machine with a hole saw. I made a fixture to weld it all together. All 4 uppers were made this way. Lowers have press-in BJs
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