2003 Honda Odyssey Front Driver Side Lower Control Arm with Ball Joint TRQ PSA84072

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Hi, this is Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how to video helps you out. Next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. In this video, we'll show you how to repair or replace the front control arms. We're going to show you the passenger side. The driver side is the same procedure. Usually these, you really won't know if they were out. A lot of times it will come up in the yearly inspection but some symptoms of bad control arms are just kind of spongy steering or hearing kind of a knocking or clanking sound when you steer back and forth, right to left. We're doing this on a 2003 Odyssey, same as a '99 to '04 Odyssey.

You'll need new control arm or control arms from 1AAuto.com, jack and jack stands, 19mm socket and ratchet. You'll need a breaker bar or a pipe for some extra leverage, 17mm and 18mm wrenches, a ball joint or sometimes called pickle fork, a hammer and some penetrating oil. Okay, as you can see here, I've got the vehicle raised up and the lug nuts with my impact wrench. If you don't have an impact wrench, you want to start the vehicle on the ground, loosen the lug nuts with a 19mm socket and breaker bar or your tire iron then raise and support the vehicle and remove the lug nuts and wheel the rest of the way. You can see here I'm kicking the tire. That's basically just the way if your tire or your wheel is a little bit frozen on because of the aluminum. Just give it some good kicks and break it loose and then you can remove the tire.

Using pliers and a small pick or a screwdriver, I'll remove the pin that holds the ball joint nut. We're going to attach two wrenches together to get a little extra force on this and you can see, it works. I'm going to speed up here as Jeremy just takes that nut all the way off. That nut is generally a 17mm, it can be an 18mm though as well. Once the nut is off, I actually like to put it back on again, a few threads just because we're going to be breaking these two separate from each other and I don't like anything to happen to suddenly. If you have the nut on there, it keeps anything from getting crazy over here. This is an air activated pickle fork. They sell them to be used with a hammer as well. The hammer ones you just put right here then you hit on the end with a hammer. This one like I said is air activated so it's powered by air. Just put it right in here. As you can see, it separates the ball point.

Now, we'll grab a pry bar, put through in the lower control arm and pry it down. Take the nut off of the lower ball joint. Hopefully when it try it out enough, pull it out of the knuckle. Spray the bolts the best you can with some penetrating oil. There's two bolts that hold the control arm to the frame of the vehicle. Now, both of the control arm bolts are 19mm. You'll want to use a ratchet with a pipe on it because it's going to be pretty tight. Or maybe not. I'm going to speed it up here as we just remove that bolt the rest of the way. As it comes out, you'll probably have to keep spinning it with your wrench and kind of pull on it to get it out the whole way. Same thing with this one, just speed it up as the bolt is removed.

As you can see, the new one versus the old one. They look identical for all intents and purposes. New one have a nice coating on it. New ball joint, new bushings and it obviously fits the same way. Put the rear of the control arm in first. Then place the bolt in. Just install a couple of threads there while we rotate the arm into place. You can get the ball joint in too. Then your front bolts. You're going to need some messing with a pry bar. You can put the nut on the ball joint now. Using the original nut, it has the grove in it so the clip will fit a lot better. We'll tighten this down. Make sure that the pin will slide through the castle nut. I think we're pretty close. Now, you just push down and wiggle it, make sure it's tight. Now, just tighten those two main bolts until they start to sit. Now, before tightening these bolts, I'm putting a jack underneath the ball joint end of the control arm and basically jacking it up until the van starts raising off the lift a little bit. That means I have full support on the suspension and you want to tighten up those bolts with all the support on the suspension.

This should be torqued to around 90 to 95 foot pounds. This one should be the same. Okay, now you can let the suspension down off the jack and put your wheel and tire back on, start the lug nuts by hand first and just kind of tighten them up preliminarily before you put the vehicle down on the ground. Now again, use your torque wrench and you want to tighten up your lug nuts between 95 and 100 foot pounds and use a start pattern as you tighten.

We hope this helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality auto replacement parts and the bets service on the internet. Please feel free to call us toll-free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the internet and in person.