Inner tie rod issues?

[kvybby]

A friend of mine has a 2007 6 with a broken left inner tie rod. She claims it just broke. Here is her story: She got in the car one morning and when she took off it lurched to the left and crashed into the neigbor's wood fence. After backing off the fence she noticed it would not go forward and got out to look and saw the front wheels pointing in different directions. It was driving normally the night before.

There are only two possibilities: 1) she left the wheels turned sharply to the left when she parked the night before and the tie rod was broken by a 5 mph crash with a wooden fence, or 2) the tie rod broke under load for some reason that morning.

There is no other collision damage to the car, no bent or broken suspension components: Struts, arms, rims, etc. are all ok. I don't even think the body is really damaged. (only other issue is the broken tie rod damaged the steering rack, which also requires replacement)

Are there any reports of failed inner tie rods?

 

[Toptech]

I have actually seen this happen to two different cars. One was a 1988 Lincoln Continental. The guy had it towed in with a broken inner tie rod. Said he was driving on the Beltway (interstate in MD) and when he tried to get off the exit the car wouldn't steer properly. No wonder why! The other one was a Mercury Sable, about the same year and they both use the same part number of tie rods. I thought for shore there was going to be a major recall, because if I had seen two of these, how many others were out there? But there was no recall and I never had another come in that way. That was probably 20ish years ago when I worked at a Lincoln dealer.