[TitaniumTT]

Clean the sucker up and get it in a vise. I'm not going to drill into my beautiful stainless steel bench to mount a vise. Vises work best, but if you don't have one, clamp it down somehow

I started by removing the outer tie rods and counting the turns on the way out, then labeling them with a sharpie. This was of course before I knew that both inners were toast. I'll save the outers as back-ups and transplant the inner/outter combo from the good rack that I have that will stay power as I don't feel like spending ~$150 on new inner tie rods.

To remove the inner tie rod ends use whatever means available. I didn't have a thin enough wrench. Usually I'm one to go buy a tool and modify it but it was late and almost time for cocktails and we had company coming over. I used a plumbers monkey wrench instead. Hey, at that point I knew they were garbage although they would've been reusable.

HINT: What you may think is an allen set screw or a roll pin isn't. Just turn on the inner tie rods and it will pop out. You WILL damamge ONE thread in doing this but it will be repairable. I guess Mazda's thinking was if you're removing the tie rod it's garbage anyway so why save the thread.

Incidentally. I went to align my car before DGRR, and counting the rotations and measuring everything put my car damn near perfect alignment even after everything, and I mean EVERYTHING including the front subframe was removed at least once.