The problem with heating steering components is that most of them are not made of mild steel but are alloyed to give them more strength. After the components are forged they are heat treated in a controlled environment to relieve the locked up stress. Once you apply heat to them you become the heat treat engineer and in all probability you have introduced new stress in the grain structure of the material. Granted, the part is not going to fall off the vehicle the minuet you let it down off the jack (in most cases) but you now have a part with an unpredictable fatigue life. The front end components are subject to a lot of load and cyclic vibration and this leads to failure by fatigue. Bump loads can reach well into the double digit "G" range at highway speeds. even driving out of you drive way you will encounter eight or ten G's. You might go a week or a month or maybe even years, you just don't know. It’s just my opinion but it's akin to playing Russian roulette when you’re in rush hour traffic at 50mph with one of these.
Mention of Magnaflux inspection was made earlier and this does show if there are any cracks present at the time of inspection. It however does not predict at what point the part is going to fatigue and fail. Generally a failure of this nature is rather abrupt because of the lack of proper stress relief, in other words the part just snaps off.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
