The main purpose of this paper is to propose a direct and simple approach, called a self-tuning design approach, to dealing with any nonsymmetric dead-zone input nonlinearity where its information is completely unknown. In order to describe the approach, the output tracking problem is considered for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with any nonsymmetric dead-zone input. First, a dead-zone input is represented as a time-varying input-dependent function such that the considered dynamical system with dead-zone input can be transfered into an uncertain nonlinear dynamical system subject to a linear input with time-varying input coefficient. Then, by making use of the self-tuning design approach, a class of adaptive robust output tracking control schemes with a rather simple structure is synthesized. Thus, the proposed direct and simple self-tuning design approach can be easily understood by the engineering designers, and the resulting simple adaptive robust control schemes can be well implemented in most practical engineering control problems. By combining the proposed self-tuning design approach with other control methods, one may expect to obtain a number of interesting results for a rather large class of uncertain nonlinear dynamical systems with dead-zone in the actuators. Finally,the simulations of some numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the validity of the theoretical results.