[Ford Man]

The car shouldn't have to be realigned just to put the boots on as long as he doesn't change any of the tie rod adjustments. As I said before if he did the work you requested before and is willing to do this labor free because of the misunderstanding I'd let him do it. By doing this it sounds like he is being as fair as possible. You could also tell him that you can't afford to have any other work done at the present time, but ask him to take a look at the inner tie rods and let you know their condition while he has the boots off. You could ask if he still has the old parts or not, but it is not likely they probably had to be turned in as cores when he purchased the new ones. The only thing that I don't understand is why he didn't know the car had PS. Have you looked and verified the new parts? If he was just trying to make money off of you he would have definitely told you about the torn tie rod boots when you picked up the car to try to get you to come back. I agree that some mechanics are just out to get you, but this doesn't seem to be the case with this one in my opinion. I use to have a '76 Chrysler Cordoba and I took it in once to have the tires rotated and they tried to tell me it needed tie rods, but what the mechanic didn't know is that I had just checked the front end shortly before and that I had just driven the car on a 500 mile trip the night before and it was driving and handling fine. I probably drove the car another 100,000 miles and never did have to replace the tie rod ends.