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Part Details
TRQ suspension kits are manufactured using premium raw materials and coatings for extended service life. Each TRQ suspension component is designed to be a direct, maintenance-free replacement to the stock unit. To extend the life of your steering and suspension components, TRQ recommends replacing components in pairs, sets, or kits. All products are fit and road-tested in our Massachusetts R&D facility to ensure we deliver on our promise of Trusted Reliable Quality.
Product Features
Install Tip: When replacing steering components, have a professional alignment performed afterwards. This ensures proper tracking and even tire wear.
Our steering and suspension components are pre-greased and sealed for long life and do not require the extra maintenance typically required by greaseable versions.
Item Condition:
New
Attention California Customers:
WARNING: This product can expose you to chemicals including Chromium (Hexavalent Compounds), which is known to the State of California to cause cancer, and birth defects or other reproductive harm. For more information, go to www.P65Warnings.ca.gov
Lifetime Warranty
This item is backed by our limited lifetime warranty. In the event that this item should fail due to manufacturing defects during intended use, we will replace the part free of charge. This warranty covers the cost of the part only.
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Tools used
Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet.
Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.
In this video, we're going to show you how to replace an upper control arm on this 2002 Chevy Suburban. We show you on the passenger side, but the driver side has the same procedure. The items you'll need are a new upper control arm from 1AAuto.com, a 10mm, 21mm, and 22mm socket and ratchet, 18mm and 21mm wrench, a marker, a torque wrench, jack and jack stands, a grease gun, a hammer, and an air hammer depending on the condition of your vehicle. After completing this procedure you will need to get a professional alignment done.
Start out by removing the hubcap. You want to remove the lug nuts. If you don't have air powered tools, you'll want to do it while the vehicle is on the ground. Loosen them preliminarily, raise the vehicle, and remove the lug nuts the rest of the way. On these brackets, you'll see a tab coming through from the upper control arm. Mark where that tab is. Remove these two 10mm bolts. Next, remove this 18mm nut, and you can see Mike uses an 18mm wrench and another wrench for some extra leverage to break it free and then removes it the rest of the way with the 18mm wrench. Hit the wheel knuckle and control arm to break them free. Then remove the 21mm nuts on either side.
Jack up your wheel, and you want to do this underneath the wheel knuckle. Remove the upper control arm nut and then remove these bolts and the bracket that's on them. Our first one pulled out no problem, this one's a bit more difficult. We tried using a hammer, that doesn't work. We tried using a wrench to help break it free, but it's in there really good. If you have this same problem, we put a nut back on it and use an air hammer to knock it out. Now that those bolts are out, you want to remove the control arm up and down while pulling out and it'll pull free.
Take your new upper control arm and push it back into place. Then push the bolts in to hold it into place. You want to make sure that you have those brackets on either side and that they're lined up. Now, angle the control arm down into the wheel knuckle. Once it's pressed down into place replace that 18mm nut. We'll fast forward as Mike tightens all of those up. Replace and tighten up those two 10mm bolts. Using a grease gun put it into place on the end of your control arm and fill it up. Put the wheel back into place and then replace each wheel lug nut and tighten them up. You want to tighten them preliminarily, lower the vehicle, and then tighten them the rest of the way. Torque each lug nut in a crossing pattern to 100 foot-pounds. Replace the hubcap and tighten up those lug nut caps.
We hope this video helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best 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.
Tools used
One of the first things you want to do is safely raise and support your vehicle by the frame so your suspension can hang. Once you've done that, take a small pry bar and we're going to take off this center cap. If you were to spin it, you're going to see a little notch in the cap. Just carefully slide this off of here. That exposes our 22-millimeter lug nuts. Remove all six. Remove your wheel. Now let's remove our 21-millimeter nut. Let's just put that nut on, just a couple threads. Now we're going to take a hammer and we're going to hit right here on the knuckle. You want to be very careful for your brake rotor.
Now that the wheel is off, we have a clear view of where we're going to start working. We're going to disconnect the electrical, this is the ABS right here, and it's very delicate. I'm just gonna come right up along here, and you're gonna see where it's supposed to be mounted to the frame. Should be pretty secure. This is missing about half of its clip, so I'll make sure I secure it in afterward. This purple right here is a little lock, it's holding it from coming separated. I like to just come right in between here, pop that up. Now we'll separate this, just take a peek, make sure you don't see any funny colors. If you were to come right down along here, we're gonna get this clip off of here as well. Just give it a little twist, lift it up, grab that ABS wire, carefully set it aside. The next thing we're going to do is remove this 10-millimeter headed bolt. The next thing we're gonna do is remove the nut that holds the upper ball joint to the knuckle. Okay. That comes right off. I'm just gonna go ahead and put it on there just a couple threads for now. Now let's use a 36-millimeter socket to remove our axle nut. Behind there, there's a washer. Go ahead and remove that as well. Let's go ahead and blast this with some penetrant.
The next thing we need to do is separate the axle from the bearing. I'm going to use this punch right here and go right in the center. You definitely don't wanna use a hammer and potentially damage the threads. The next thing we need to do is remove our mounting bolts that hold the caliper to the knuckle, use an 18-millimeter. Carefully hang your caliper, so it's putting no pressure on your flex hoses. So, now let's just double-check to make sure this upper ball joint nut is still on there a few good threads, it hasn't loosened upon us. And then we'll move down here to the lower ball joint nut. Remove that as well. Take that, and just put it on a couple threads.
Okay, so now it's gonna be time to separate the upper ball joint from the knuckle right here. Pay special attention to anything that's delicate that you don't want ruined, such as an ABS wire. Make sure that that's secure and safely out of the way. Go ahead and take your nice little hammer. And we're going to bonk right here on the knuckle itself. As you can tell it's separated, we can move along. So, now let's push down on this. Remove that nut. And carefully draw this down. Now if you're worried the knuckle with a rotor is going to be too heavy, you can go ahead and use a Torx bit right here, remove that bolt, and take the rotor right off. The problem with removing it like that is you're gonna have to clean up the mating surface between the wheel bearing and the rotor itself. So, now I'm going to take my hammer again and I'm going to come right down here and we're going to hit right on the knuckle itself until this comes down. There we are. Carefully lift up, remove the ball joint nut. Carefully lower this down, remove your knuckle.
The next thing you're going to want to do is support your lower control arm so that you're not putting maximum pressure on your front shock/strut. If you are, you can potentially damage it, because we're going to be using a hammer and we're going to hit right here on the lower ball joint to break it free.
Now to install the lower ball joint, we're gonna want to take the boot off of it first. So, I'm just going to use a nice small screwdriver, pry bar, weasel it in between. Then just kind of separate the two. Be careful not to damage the boot, of course, because we're going to be using it. The next thing we need is a ball joint kit with a cup that's going to fit right up against this lip. We're going to come right underneath, and then we're going to press this right up and in. Right along the bottom. I'm going to use a cup that looks like this, with a hole in the bottom, that's for the stud to go through. It's going to press right up against this ridge right here. Take this cup, something that's hollow enough to make sure that the top part of the ball joint can fit inside. Put it right over the top. Now we're going to take our ball joint C-clamp, put it right over the top, bottom it out. Just check to make sure that the cup is centered to approximately where the ball joints going to be.
Now we're going to tighten this up. As we do that, we want to check this ridge and make sure it matches up directly along this control arm. As you can tell, the ball joint ridge is directly against the control arm right here. Before I release any pressure, I'm just going to give the control arm a couple light bonks with my hammer, just for a little bit of vibration to help make sure this is seated securely. That should be pretty great. Carefully remove your tool. Make sure you install your clamp. To do that, just use these little pliers right here. They fit inside the holes, and then you can spread it. Slide it right over. Make sure it's sitting inside the roof all the way around. If it isn't, just work at it until it is. Now we're going to install our boot. Just carefully bring it up here. I like to try to start it on one side, so I'll go on the side farthest away from me. Then I'll use some pliers and just kind of roll the lip right on. Obviously, be careful not to poke any holes in the boot. Inspect it for any damage. Make sure that it's completely secured. This looks perfect.
Go ahead and take your knuckle. I'm going to start it on the axle a little bit, then slide it over the lower ball joint stud. Lift it up. Kink it to the side and start on that lower ball joint nut. Wiggle the axle around. Should slide right in. Now we're going to use a bar, we're going to pull this upper ball joint down into here. Get the nut, go ahead and start it on there. Just going to take my bar, and try to hold pressure on the lower ball joint to the knuckle. And then we're going to go ahead and try to tighten it up. So, now you'd want to torque this to 37-foot-pounds. If for some reason you can't get your torque wrench in there, like I can't, I would just continue with my wrench and make sure it's nice and tight. [vocalization]. Perfect.
Now it's time to torque up that lower ball joint nut as well. Torque it to 37-foot-pounds. Now what we want to do is make sure that our slot is lined up with the hole that goes through the ball joint stud, so we can make sure we install our cotter pin. Go ahead and slide that through. If for some reason yours is not lined up when you torqued it, you need to continue tightening, not loosening, until it's lined up with the next available slot. Go ahead and peen that over and lock it in. All right. So, now it's gonna be time to get the caliper on here. Just go ahead and slide it right over the rotor. Now we're gonna line up those bolt holes. I like to use some red threadlocker on these bolts. And start them in there. Okay. Let's bottom them out. Now let's go ahead and torque these 248-foot-pounds. Now we'll just go ahead and take that tie rod end, put right through the knuckle. Take your nut, start it on there. We're gonna bottom it out. Now you're gonna torque this to 44-foot-pounds. That's torqued.
The next thing we're gonna do is look to see if we can find the hole in the stud of the tie rod and match it with the next corresponding slot on the tie rod stud nut. This doesn't line up, so what I need to do now is I need to continue tightening until it does. I can see right through. I'm going to grab that locking cotter pin and install it. Slide that right on through and just peen it over. There's no way that this nut can come loose. Now it's going to be time to get the washer with the axle nut on there. Go ahead and slide the pair on. Go ahead and use your 36-millimeter socket, bottom it out, and then we'll torque it. Just gonna put a little splash of never-seize in here, I've got my mounting bolt. Let's use our 10-millimeter and snug it up. Make sure it's fully secured, make sure there's nothing binding your flex hose for your brakes are not twisted in any way.
Now it's time to get our ABS wire re-secured. Let's go ahead and put it in right here. Make sure it cannot come loose. If this can hang around and move around, it could potentially get damaged. Go ahead and connect this in now. Listen for a click, give it a tug. Go ahead and slide in your lock. Now we're going to take our mounting hardware here and just slide it right down in there. It's just a little push clip. Give it a nice tug, make sure it's definitely secured.
So, of course, next, you'd want to go ahead and torque down this nut right here. And that's going to be torqued to 177-foot-pounds. You can do that several ways. If you were to just do it like this, what you're going to notice is it just keeps spinning. If that was the case, what you would do is you can use a pry bar coming straight through these lug studs like this down to the ground. And so it holds it from spinning on you and then you would torque it. If you didn't want to go through the process doing that you can go ahead and throw the wheel up on there and then go through the center hole, which is the way that I'm going to do it.
We'll grab those lug nuts, start them all on there. Let's bottom these out. Now we'll bring it down to the ground and we'll make it so the wheel is just barely touching enough so the wheel can't spin. It's time to torque down this axle nut, 177-foot pounds like I said. Torqued. Now let's do the lug nuts,140-foot-pounds. Go crisscross. Torqued. Now it's gonna be time to get the center cover on. Before you go ahead and pound it on there, just take a look at the back, you're going to see something that looks a lot like a valve stem. Line it up. It's gonna go pretty much just like this. Light bonk, and then, of course, clean up your wheel, make it look nice and pretty and take it for a road test.
Tools used
You want to keep in mind when you're doing this job after you're done, you're going to want to go to a local garage and have the vehicle aligned so you don't have premature tire wear. Take the center cap off. I'll just use a straight blade screwdriver, just get behind here, slide it off. Take the lug nuts off. Use a 22-millimeter socket. Gonna take the wheel off. [inaudible 00:00:34] off this jam nut. I'm going to use a 7/8 wrench. And just take some rust penetrant, this thing is a little bit rusty so let that soak a little bit. Gonna take a 18-millimeter socket, take this nut off. And take a hammer and just hit the bottom of the tie rod to release it from the knuckle. Just like that.
Now when I take off the tie rod, just count how many turns you have. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7...21, 22 and write that number down. Now I'm going to take a large adjustable wrench and loosen up the inner tie rod end. And loosen this up and just slide it off. Take a little thread locker, put it on the threads before you put the new one on and line it up. And then use my adjustable wrench to tighten this up. If you have the ability to use a torque wrench and torque this, you want to torque this to 74 foot-pounds. And take the outer tie rod, one, two, and then count the turns that you counted before. Three...21, 22. Take the jam nut not off...I mean the castle nut off and slide it in the knuckle. Slide the stud part into the knuckle. Put the nut on. Just gonna use a pry bar, pry down on the outer tie rod in to prevent the stud from spinning, and just snug this up a little bit. Use the 18-millimeter socket. And torque this to 37 foot-pounds. And if the hole doesn't line up for the cotter pin, just tighten the castle nut until it lines up. Little more. Should be good. Put the cotter pin through. And take my cutters and just bend this over then just trim the excess.
Tighten up this jam nut. I'm going to use a 13/16 wrench, and if you have the ability to torque it, torque it to 36 foot-pounds. There's a grease fitting right here. Just take a grease gun and give it a couple pumps. And I really give it a couple of pumps until I see the boot move a little bit. And that's good. Put the wheel back on. And the lug nuts. And now I'm gonna torque these lug nuts in a star pattern or cross pattern to 140 foot-pounds to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again, double-check. And put the center cap on.
Tools used
You wanna keep in mind when you're doing this job, after you're done, you're gonna wanna go to a local garage and have the vehicle aligned so you don't have premature tire wear.
Take this center cap off. We'll just use a straight blade screwdriver. Just get behind here, slide it off. Get the lug nuts off. Use a 22-millimeter socket. Now take the wheel off.
Loosen up this jam nut. I'm gonna use a 7/8 wrench. And just take some rust penetrant, this thing's a little bit rusty. So let that soak a little bit. Now take a 18-millimeter socket. Take this nut off. And take a hammer and just hit the bottom of the tie rod to release it from the knuckle. Just like that. Now I'm gonna take off the tie rod. Just count how many turns you have. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 21, 22. And write that number down. And take the outer tie rod, one, two. And then count the turns that you counted before, 3, 21, 22. Take the jam nut off. I mean, the castle nut off. And slide it in the knuckle. Slide the stud part into the knuckle. Put the nut on. Just gonna use a pry bar. Pry down on the outer tie rod end to prevent the stud from spinning. And just snug this up a little bit. It's the 18-millimeter socket. And torque this to 37-foot-pounds. And if the hole doesn't line up for the cotter pin, just tighten the castle nut until it lines up. Little more. Should be good. Put the cotter pin through. And take my cutters and just bend this over. And just trim the excess. Tighten up this jam nut. I'm gonna use a 13/16 wrench. And if you have the ability to torque it, torque it to 36-foot-pounds.
Put the wheel on. And the lug nuts. And now I'm gonna torque these lug nuts in a star pattern or cross pattern to 140-foot-pounds to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again. Double-check. And put the center cap on.
Tools used
Tools used
Before you start, you wanna be aware that after you're done this job, you're gonna wanna go to an alignment specialist so that you can have the vehicle aligned so you don't wear out the tires prematurely.
I'm gonna remove the wheel. Use a 22-millimeter socket, take the lug nuts off. And take the wheel off.
I'm gonna loosen up the jam nut. You can use a 22-millimeter wrench or a 7/8 wrench. Just get that loose. That's good. I'm just gonna spray a little rust penetrant on here. Gonna use an 18-millimeter socket, take this nut off. And if the nut doesn't come off and the stud starts spinning, you can use an 8-millimeter socket to hold that stud from spinning and then just use the wrench to take the nut off. Now you can take a hammer and just give a tap on the bottom of the tir rod or take a pickle fork and separate it this way. Just if you use a pickle fork, it's probably gonna rip the boot right here. So I'm just gonna give it a hit right here. There we go. And now we're gonna take the outer tie rod off. As we unscrew this, just count the threads. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 23, 24. So write that number down and when you go to put it back together, you're gonna count them to put the other one in the same position that that one was in.
And take the new tie rod end. Get this started. Make sure you count. One, 2, 3, 4, 5, 22, 23, 24. And line this up in the knuckle. Take the castle nut. Get that started. Now what you can do is to prevent the stud from spinning, you can take a prybar. Just pry in between the knuckle and pry down on the tie rod. Use an 18-millimeter socket and tighten this up. And tighten this to 37 foot-pounds. And then just check to see where the stud...where the hole is for the castle nut and if you need to, you can snug it up a little bit more to get it to line up. And that hole lines up. Now take the cotter pin, slide it through. Should slide through this way. And take some side cutters and just bend it. Just tap it out of the way. And then trim off the excess. And we'll snug up the jam nut. And tighten that to 50 foot-pounds.
Put the wheel back on. And the lug nuts. Now we're gonna tighten these lug nuts down to 140 foot-pounds and I'm gonna do it in a cross pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again, double-check.
Tools used
Tools used
Now one of the first things you're going to want to do before you start any job is to make sure you're safe as possible. You want to have safety glasses and hand protection at all times. The next thing you're going to want to do is safely raise and support your vehicle so that your wheel is off the ground. Next, if there's a center cap, remove the plastic center cap and that'll expose your lug nuts. Remove all six using a 22-millimeter socket. Remove your wheel.
Now that we have a nice clear view of our tie rods, I'm going to spray down this area right here. This is the adjustment area. Use a little bit of penetrant. That's going to help you along. Using some nice long pliers, I'm going to grab right onto this and I'm going to turn it clockwise. That'll break free this jam nut. Okay, that broke free. Let's remove the nut that holds that outer tie rod end to the knuckle. Now we're going to hit right here on the knuckle to break our outer tie rod end free from the knuckle.
Turn your outer tie rod end counter-clockwise and count the amount of times it turns around as you remove it. One, two, three, and so on. Okay. Write down that corresponding number so you can remember. Now it's going to be time to get the inner tie rod end off of here. Here's the new inner tie rod end. And if you were to look right along this edge right here, that's the area we're going to need to grab onto, and then turn this counter-clockwise to break it free and eventually remove it. So we'll come right under here with our nice long pliers and get it off of there. There we go.
There it is friends. Now it's going to be time to install our new inner tie rod end. You might notice that there's no grease fitting to be able to grease this. Really there is. The grease is going to come right through that hole right there and that'll happen through here, starting at this point right here at this fitting. Put grease here, it comes right through and then of course it fills up the boot on the inner tie rod end. All right. I put some thread locker on here. I'm just going to go ahead and start this thing by hand. Now that we have that, as far as we can get it by hand, let's go ahead and snug it up with our pliers. Bottomed out. Just give it a teeny bit more. Awesome. Let's remove that jam nut. Let's put a little bit of copper never seize on the inner tie rod end threads, and then we'll just work that jam nut up the inner tie rod end quite a bit here. Now that we have the threaded area coded, we have our outer tie rod end, let's go ahead and put that on. And we're going to count it in the same amount of threads that we counted the original one off. That was one, two, three, and so on.
Okay? Just bring this so it's close. Put that node off of there. Put this on there. Let's bottom that out. Now we're going to torque this nut to 48 foot-pounds. All right. So now that we have that torqued, we need to pay special attention to where the slot on the castle nut lines up with the hole in the stud. If it doesn't line up, you need to continue tightening until it does. Okay. So that looks pretty good. Let's try it. That slides right through, just pin it over. The cotter pin is going to ensure that there's no way that this nut can come loose. Now it's going to be time to tighten up your jam nut. To tighten this, we're going to turn it counter-clockwise. When you torque it, you would want to torque it to 37 foot-pounds if you have the ability.
Okay. Just make sure that it's nice and snug. By the time you're finished, make sure your outer tie rod end is nice and parallel to the ground or at least as parallel as it can be. Now it's going to be time to get the grease fitting out of here. Use your 8-millimeter. There it is. Let's clean off around the area. Grab your new grease fitting. We'll start it right in there by hand, and then we'll snug it up, nice and tight. Let's give it a little grease
Now let's get the wheel back up on here. Okay. Now with the wheel barely on the ground so it can't spin, we're going to torque the lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds. Torqued. If you have a center cover, put it on there now. Now that you've finished your service, go ahead and take it for a road test and make sure you get it down to a local reputable alignment shop.
Tools used
So before you do this job, you wanna keep in mind that after you're done, you're gonna have to go to an alignment shop and have the vehicle aligned so you don't burn out your tires and have premature tire wear. Now, I'm gonna remove the wheel. Use a 22-millimeter socket. Take off the lug nuts. Take the wheel off.
Now, I wanna get this wheel speed sensor wire out of the way. I'm gonna use a trim tool to remove the hold downs, this one right there and right here. And then disconnect the connector up top. I just wanna move it out of the way. Now, I'm gonna remove this bracket for the brake hose. I'm gonna use a 10-millimeter socket to take this bolt out. Oh. And sometimes they'll break. That's okay. Just set it aside.
Now, I'm gonna loosen up this nut. I'm not gonna completely take it off. I just wanna loosen it using an 18-millimeter wrench. All right. So I'll leave a couple of threads on there. That's good. Now, I'm gonna break the ball joint free from the knuckle. I'm gonna use a pickle fork. You could try tapping the knuckle, but you wanna be careful. You don't wanna break it. Just watch out for the brake hose. Make sure you're not hitting the brake hose on the other side. There we go.
Now, I'm gonna support the lower control arm with a jack stand. I wanna take the load off the upper control arm. Just lower it onto that. You could always use a floor jack. All right. Now, I'm gonna take a pry bar and just pry down on the control arm and then I can take the nut off of the ball joint. And if the stud starts spinning, just pry down on the pry bar a little bit more and then take that nut off.
You can slide the knuckle out. I could leave it right there for now. I'm gonna take these bolts out next. So that you don't break the axle, you wanna make sure that you keep the knuckle pulled in towards the vehicle so it doesn't pull out too far. So you can always use a strap like this and just tie this down so it doesn't fall out. Right now, I'm gonna use a 21-millimeter wrench on the bolt here and either a 13/16 or a 20-millimeter wrench on this side. Loosen the nut up. I might need a breaker bar. Yep.
Or you can use a 21-millimeter socket as well. Break it free. Loosen up the nut. And then take that nut off. You can take this cam off. This is like a washer that's adjustable. You can use some type of pry tool. And just slide that out. I'm gonna use an air hammer with a hammerhead and just push this bolt out. To get this bolt out, if this bracket is in your way, you can just tip up the control arm. Use a 13-millimeter socket to take this bolt out. Just slide the bracket out of your way. Just be careful not to bend the brake line. Now, just take a punch and a hammer and just tap it out the rest of the way. And you can do the same on the other side. And when you're taking that other side out, you don't have to take the shock out. You just have to rotate the cam so that it goes behind the shock.
Now, I'll just grab the upper control arm, and work it back and forth, then you can slide it up. And take the new arm. Just slide it in position and then take the bolts with the inside cam. There we go. All right. So on the outside of these cams, these have these little nylon or plastic spacers right here. That's going to make it so the alignment's close to where it should be. It's not gonna be exact. You still need to get an alignment done after you're done. So when you put these on and you put that tab through that hole, if you still have these on the vehicle, then it's gonna be close. That'll get you somewhat close to where it should be. Install the nuts. There we go.
All right. So when I go to torque these 2 bolts down, what I wanna use is my 13-millimeter, 13/16 wrench. And I want this upper control arm to be as close to ride height as possible. Ideally, you put this all back together and put the weight of the vehicle on it, and then retorque that. But that's not that easy to get to. So try to get the upper control arm as close to ride height as possible. Sometimes you take a 12-millimeter socket, just stick it under here, and that's pretty close.
And then you wanna torque this to 140 foot pounds, both this one and the other one. And once those are all torqued, you can take the socket out. Now, I can take this strap out of the way, and take the brake hose, line this back up. Put the bolt in and snug it up. Now, I'll get the ball joint lined up. You might have to use a pry bar. Get the nut started. Now, I'm gonna pry down on the control arm and then tighten that nut. Use a 19-millimeter ratchet wrench. Then if you have the ability to torque this nut, you're gonna wanna torque that to 37 foot pounds or do the best you can.
That's good. Now, I'll take this bracket for the brake hose and take a bolt. Put the bolt back in and snug it up. Take the ABS wire or the wheel speed sensor harness, and reposition this. And plug the connector back in. That's good. All right. Now you can take the grease fitting and put that in the ball joint. Get that started. And use a 7-millimeter wrench and just snug it up and give it a couple pumps. You can watch the boot of the ball joint, and then once you see it move, then it should be good enough. That's good. Now, I'm gonna raise the vehicle and reinstall the wheel. And put the lug nuts on. Now, I'm gonna torque these lug nuts to 140 foot pounds in a cross pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. I'll just go around again and double-check.
Tools used
Now one of the first things you're gonna wanna do before you start any job is to make sure you're safe as possible. You wanna have safety glasses and hand protection at all times. The next thing you're gonna wanna do is safely raise and support your vehicle so that your wheels are off the ground. Next, if there's a center cap, remove the plastic center cap and that will expose your lug nuts. Remove all 6 using a 22-millimeter socket. Remove your wheel. Now that we have a nice clear view of our tire rods, I'm gonna spray down this area right here. This is the adjustment area. Use a little bit of penetrant. That's gonna help you along. Using some nice long pliers, I'm gonna grab right onto this and I'm gonna turn it clockwise. That'll break free this jam nut. Okay, that broke free. Let's remove the nut that holds the outer tie rod end to the knuckle.
Now we're gonna hit right here on the knuckle to break our outer tie rod end free from the knuckle. Turn your outer tie rod end counterclockwise and count the amount of times it turns around as you remove it. One, two, three and so on. Okay. Write down that corresponding number so you can remember. We have our outer tie rod end. Let's go ahead and put that on. And we're gonna count it in the same amount of threads that we counted the original one off. That was one, two, three and so on. Okay. Just bring this so it's close. Get that nut off of there. I'm gonna put this on there. Let's bottom that out. Now we're gonna torque this nut to 48 foot-pounds. All right. So now that we have that torqued, we need to pay special attention to where the slot on the castle nut lines up with the hole in the stud. If it doesn't line up, you need to continue tightening until it does. Okay, so that looks pretty good. Let's try it.
That slides right through. Spin it over. The cotter pin's gonna ensure that there's no way that this nut can come loose. Now it's gonna be time to tighten up your jam nut. To tighten this we're gonna turn it counter clockwise. When you torque it, you would wanna torque it to 37 foot-pounds if you have the ability. Let's see here. Okay. Just make sure that it's nice and snug. By the time you're finished, make sure your outer tie rod end is nice and parallel to the ground or at least as parallel as it can be. Now let's get the wheel back up on here. Okay. Now with the wheel barely on the ground so it can't spin, we're gonna torque the lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds. Torqued. If you have a center cover, put it on there now. Now that you've finished your service, go ahead and take it for a road test and make sure you get it down to a local reputable alignment shop.
Tools used
Tools used
Tools used
Take the center cap off. Use a straight-blade screwdriver. Use a 22-millimeter socket. Take the lug nuts off. Pull the wheel off. These bolts are pretty rusty so I'm just going to use some rust penetrant and soak those before I start. Before we take this nut off, we just want to mark this cam right here. This is for the alignment. When you go to put this back together, you want to put this in the same location so at least it's close. You're still going to need to get an alignment done afterwards, but this will get it a little bit closer. I want to get this ABS wire out of the way, our wheel speed sensor wire. Disconnect the connector up here. Just push up on that tab, slide it out and use a trim tool. Just pull up on that retainer. You can do the same over here, and right here. Sometimes these ones break, just be careful. All right. So this piece is going to break so I'm just going to disconnect it right from the arm itself. And disconnect this right here. Sometimes you can use a screwdriver and just pop that out, or a needle-nose pliers also works. You just squeeze those together. I'm just going to put some rust penetrant on this bolt right here. Let that soak a little bit. We want to take that off next. Just remove this bracket. Use a 10-millimeter socket. Remove this bolt. It's probably going to break. Yup, it broke. Well, hopefully yours doesn't break. And slide that off.
All right. Now, we're going to take this nut off using an 18-millimeter wrench. Now I'm going to leave this nut on just a couple of threads, and then we're going to break this upper ball joint free from the knuckle. I'm going to use a pickle fork to break this free. Just slide it in, in between the ball joint and the knuckle and just give it a hit. There we go. Take the pickle fork out and just push down the upper control arm a little bit. You might need a pry bar. And take the nut off and you could slide it out. And just make sure that there's not too much tension on the brake line, brake hose. I'm going to take a 21-millimeter wrench, 21-millimeter socket. Now this is old and rusty so I just had to heat up that nut to break it loose. Normally you wouldn't have to do that. And loosen it up. That nut's pretty hot right now so I'm just going to let that cool down before I take that off. Take that nut off and see if you can pry this cam off. This is just the alignment cam. Just use a pry bar and a hammer. And just pry that off. All right. This cam bolt is stuck in there pretty good so I'm just going to use some more rust penetrant, soak it down for a while.
Here we go. All right. Get that out and do the same for the other side. All right. I'm just going to take this bracket out of the way. Just use a 13-millimeter socket and you can just slide it out of the way. Don't bend it too much. Here we go. And just use a pry bar and you can pry the arm out. And take the new control arm and just line it up. You can take a rubber mallet, or a dead-blow hammer to tap it in if you need to. And get the bolt started. And take this cam and the nut. Get the nut started. Now we tighten this up. Now we want to align that mark up. What you do is take your 21-millimeter wrench and just move the bolt on this side until that lines up. And you can snug that down. And we'll do the same for the other side. All right. Now, we're going to torque this nut to 140-foot-pounds. Do the same on the front one. Take this brake hose bracket and install that. Put the bolt back in and tighten that up. Get the nut off. Put that aside. Get this lined up with the upper knuckle. And I'll use a pry bar, just pry this down. Take the nut and get the nut started.
Now, I'm going to use a 19-millimeter ratchet wrench, while I'm using the pry bar to pry it down on the ball joint. Tighten this up. All right. Now, if you have the ability, just torque this with a torque wrench, you can torque this to 37-foot-pounds. Do the best you can. And if the stud starts spinning, you can use an allen key, that's a six-millimeter hex key. But if you use the pry bar and you just pry it down, you should be able to get that without having the stud spinning. Take this brake hose bracket and line that up. Put the nut on or the bolt in and snug it up. And take the wheel speed sensor wire and reconnect that. And then we have this holder or clip. Install that. Lock that in place. Reinstall this clip and connect the connector. And push the retainer. I'm just going to find the hole where it goes. There it is. And lock that in position. And take this fitting. Install that. Snug it up with a seven-millimeter wrench.
And take a grease gun and give it a couple pumps of grease. What you can do is look at the boot as you're greasing it, once you see the boot start to move, that's good enough. And put the wheel back up. Put the lug nuts on. Now I'm going to torque these lug nuts to 140-foot-pounds in any star pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again, double check. Install the center cap.
Tools used
Before you start, you wanna be aware that after you're done this job, you're gonna wanna go to an alignment specialist so that you can have the vehicle aligned so you don't wear out the tires prematurely.
I'm gonna remove the wheel. Use a 22-millimeter socket. Take the lug nuts off. And take the wheel off. I'm gonna loosen up the jam nut. You can use a 22-millimeter wrench or a 7/8 wrench. Just get that loose. That's good. I'm just gonna spray a little rust penetrant on here. And use an 18-millimeter socket, take this nut off. And if the nut doesn't come off and the stud starts spinning, you can use an 8-millimeter socket to hold that stud from spinning, and then just use the wrench to take the nut off. Now you can take a hammer and just give a tap on the bottom of the tie rod, or take a pickle fork and separate it this way. Just if you use a pickle fork, it's probably gonna rip the boot right here. I'm just gonna give it a hit right here. There we go. And now we're gonna take the outer tie rod off. As we unscrew this, just count the threads. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 23, 24. So write that number down. And when you go to put it back together, you're gonna count them to put the other one in the same position that that one was in.
Now I'm gonna take off the inner tie rod end. I'm gonna use a large adjustable wrench because I don't have a wrench that's big enough to fit this. Slide this over and loosen it up. And eventually we'll get that off. Take the inner tie rod end and get this started. Now we're gonna tighten this up with the adjustable wrench. If you have the ability to torque this, you wanna torque this to 74-foot-pounds. Just do the best you can. That's good. Then you wanna take a grease gun and hook it up to this grease fitting and give it a couple pumps. You can do it until you start seeing the boot move a little bit, then you know there's plenty of grease in there. And take the new tie rod end. Get this started. Make sure you count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 22, 23, 24 and line this up in the knuckle. Take the castle nut, get that started. Now, what you can do is to prevent the stud from spinning, you can take a pry bar, just pry in between the knuckle and pry down on the tie rod, use an18-millimeter socket and tighten this up. And tighten this to 37-foot-pounds. And then just check to see where the hole is for the castle nut. And if you need to, you can snug it up a little bit more to get it to line up. And that that hole lines up. Now take the cotter pin, slide it through, actually we'll slide it through this way and take some side cutters and just bend it. Tap it out of the way, and then trim off the excess. And we'll snug up the jam nut and tighten that to 50-foot-pounds. Put the wheel back on and the lug nuts. I'm gonna take these lug nuts down to 140-foot-pounds, and I'm gonna do it in a cross pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. Just go around again. Double-check.
Tools used
Tools used
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Hi, I'm Don from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.
In this video, we're going to show how to replace an outer tie rod on this 2002 Chevy Suburban, and it's the same part and similar process on these Suburbans from 2001 to 2006. We show you on the passenger side, but the driver side is the same procedure. The items you'll need for this are a new outer tie rod from 1AAuto.com; 7mm, 13mm, 18mm and 22mm socket and ratchet; flat-blade screwdriver; adjustable wrench; tape measure; pliers; hammer; and a grease gun.
You want to just loosen up these 22mm caps, and then pull the hubcap free. Then, you want to loosen these lug nuts while the vehicle is on the ground, then raise the vehicle and remove them the rest of the way, unless you have air-powered tools. Then, you can do it while it's in the air.
Now you want to measure from the boot on your inner tie rod to the edge of your outer tie rod and just remember that measurement. Now, using your adjustable wrench, loosen up this nut right here, and then you want to remove this 18mm nut down here. Now just hit on your knuckle with a hammer and this is going to break up that outer tie rod and make it easier to pull out. Now just hold this nut with the adjustable wrench, pull the outer tie rod off and just twist it until it comes free. We'll fast forward as Don does this. You want to make sure that the inner tie rod doesn't spin while you're removing the outer tie rod.
Now, put the grease fitting into your new outer tie rod and just tighten that 7mm grease fitting up. Then twist the outer tie rod back onto your inner tie rod and push it down into place. Now, replace the castle nut and just tighten that up. Then push the cotter pin through and, using your pliers, just bend the ends of it. Now, using your grease gun, fill the tie rod with grease. Measure, and you should get about the same distance. That's a good preliminary alignment. You should have your car aligned after this. Tighten up the lock nut to hold it in place.
Now replace your wheel and then replace those lug nuts and tighten them preliminarily. Lower the vehicle and tighten them the rest of the way. Now torque the lug nuts in a crossing pattern to 100 foot-pounds. Replace the hubcap and tighten up those caps.
We hope this video helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best 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.
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