Alignment Issue after Front End Rebuild | SwedeSpeed

2007 XC70 here, 217,000 miles. I’ve had the car for the past 80k mi and don’t know the history before that. I hadn’t done anything to the front end in the time I’ve had the car and pretty much all ball joints and bushings were shot, so I decided to overhall everything—new quick struts, control arms, ball joints, inner and out tie rods, end links. Also did new brake rotors and pads while I was in there. I got the tie rod alignment as close as possible by counting the turns as I removed and replaced, but when I got everything back together and back on the ground, the toe was pretty far off, visibly so. I didn’t have time to adjust before my alignment appointment so I limped it about a mile to the shop going slow on side streets. The shop said that they couldn’t get it within spec because the tie rod ends were maxed out, and said to check to make sure I had the right tie rod parts. However based on the printout they got it an awful lot closer, and it actually felt pretty good when I drove it home, probably maxing out at 30mph on city streets.

At home I had a look and sure enough the outer tie rods were threaded all the way in on the inner tie rods with no threads left exposed. I had used FCP Euro’s Lemforder tie rod kit for the replacement. I measured the replacement outer tie rods against the genuine Volvo ones I took out and they were the same length. I didn’t want to take off the boot of the inner tie rod to measure, but just by checking part number it seems like the correct inner tie rods in the kit. I know for a fact that I compared the length of the threads on the inner tie rods to the genuine volvo ones I took out before I installed them to make sure counting turns would be a somewhat accurate, and they checked out. I didn’t specifically compare the size of the “body” of the inner tie rods but seems like I would have noticed if they were an inch shorter. I feel reasonably sure that both inner and outer tie rods have the same dimensions as the genuine volvo ones I took out.

So that being said, is there something else that might be affecting toe adjustment by that much that maxed out tie rod threads can’t correct for? It did seem weird that after counting turns on the tie rods they were so far off that I could tell by looking at the wheels. The control arms and ball joints were Lemforder and the size seemed to match up with the genuine volvo ones I took out. All parts were either from FCP Euro or IPD so I was relying on their fitment matching. It was the first time I’ve done most of this work besides replacing struts and brakes so there is a chance I did something stupid, but I did quite a bit of research before digging in and feel confident enough in my mechanical aptitute to simply swap parts like this. I tried to be meticulous about replacing everything the way it came out with proper torque specs and everything.

I’m having trouble posting an image of the alignment print out from the shop, but maybe I can find another way if that might be illuminating for anyone. Total toe for the front was 1.59° before and they got it down to .58° with maxed out tie rods, which is still pretty far out of spec. Though as I mentioned it felt pretty good on the short drive home.