How to upgrade steering gears and tie rod?

i let someone drive my tractor a couple days ago and i didnt tell the that my steering gears were bad, so , naturally, they hit a building with one tire and bent my tie rod. my wheels were like \ / and the gears stripped even more when they tried to keep on driving. my tie rod is unbent now but my question is if there is any way to fix or upgrade my tie rod and steering gears without buying stock parts and will last a long time and take a beating and FOR CHEAP!!!!! it has broken to many times now.

Search out some posts on direct steering. You should e able to build it with scrap laying around.

You could do a direct steering setup. Look around the forum for a tutorial on how to make one. Its fairly simple and doesnt use gears.

As for the tie rod, you can do what I did. I used a 1/2" rod and welded it to the tie rod. I've since then dropped a golf cart axle and steering into my tractor.

These are setups on direct steering found at Hey mow - the pic is of a racing tractor at the site:





If its a craftsman, i did a swap on my 99 weedeater that had crappy plastic pieces in the steering - i took the steering setup out of my parts 85LT12 and did a virtual bolt in swap with minimal modifications - works tons better then original.