"Bill" wrote in
:

My friend and I went up to the forest to cut firewood today.

We were about 25 miles from the nearest town, and nine miles up a bumpy
gravel forest service road when we heard a dragging noise from under the
truck. I thought it was a tree branch stuck under the truck.

My friend got out and looked under the truck, then got a look of worry
on his face. He said; "We are [expletive deleted]! The tie rod end on
the left front wheel is broken off!" (This connects the front two
wheels so they both point the same direction when you turn the steering
wheel.)

One front wheel was pointing to the left and the other to the right. Not
a good situation to be in, especially out in the middle of nowhere.

So then we got on the CB and tried the emergency channel. No luck. Then
tried every other channel for 1/2 hour. No luck. We were too far up in
the mountains for anyone to receive our signal.

Then my friend got an idea. He used the jack to snap the tie rod back in
place. I then tried turning the truck around. It snapped back out of
place...

So then we just sat there for a while. Then my friend got another idea.
He removed his shoe lace and said let's use this to tie it in place.

So we did just that. Used the jack to snap the tie rod back in place,
then held it there with the shoe lace wrapped many times around and tied
(long shoe lace).

Then I proceeded to "back up and go forward" about 15 times to slowly
turn the truck around (being careful to not turn the steering wheel very
much). Eventually I got the truck pointed to go back down the road.

Then we drove very slowly all the way down that forest service road (9
miles) to a main road where we were able to get someone to call a tow
truck for us.

So my clever friend and his "shoe lace" got us home!

A bungee did this for me so well I was almost tempted to forget about
replacing the tie rod end.