2002 GMC S-15 Sonoma 4 Wheel Drive Front 16 Piece Steering, Suspension, & Drivetrain Kit TRQ PSA69920

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Hi I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing and maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20 plus years experience restoring cars and trucks, to show you the correct way to install parts from 1A Auto.com. The right parts, installed correctly, are going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

In this video we'll be showing you how to remove a ball joint from this S-10 pickup, same as any pickup truck or Blazer. This is just the removal. We do have the installation in a video response to this video.

The tools you'll need are:
You'll need metric sockets anywhere from 10 mm to 35 mm with Handles and Extensions.
You'll need wrenches anywhere from 10 mm to 19 mm.
A jack and jack stands. You will also need a large screwdriver, or pry bar or air chisel. That's if you're replacing the original ball joints that are riveted in, penetrating oil and a torque wrench.
We strongly recommend that you have air tools. You can do it with hand tools, but it's slightly more difficult.

First, if you're using hand tools you're going to want to loosen those lug nuts up with a 19 mm wrench. You want to do this on the ground so that your wheels won't be moving. The other thing you're going to want to do is you're going to want to use your 35 mm socket to loosen the hub nut. Now I'm going to raise the car up and secure it.
I've raised the wheel I'm working on up off the ground by putting the jack under the control arm. I also have a jack stand under the frame here that's what's going to hold most of the weight.

I'm going to remove the tire, and then I can remove the center hub nut (35 mm) and the washer. Now, I'm going to remove my brake caliper by removing the bolt on top and the bolt on the backside. They're both 18 mm bolts. Now I'm going to use my wrench to just pry the caliper right off. Then, I'll take the disc off.

What you want to do is transfer the weight back on the control arms. Move the jack out to the end of the control arm, and jack it up. Now, most of the weight is on the jack with only a little weight on the jack stand. I'm disconnecting the harness, and then I'm going to remove the clips for the hub harness. These clips are on the left side. Use a screw driver to pry it up out of the frame. I'm prying the harness clips off. I'm going to coat the nuts with penetrating oil. Then I'm going to take the small one off with the 10 mm wrench.

I'm, actually going to get the wrench up behind to hold that bolt. Then, I'm removing that bolt. Okay, here I'm just finishing up taking out that bolt (I like to put the bolt and the nut back into the control arm just for safe keeping so I'll know where they are). The last bolt on the frame is a 13 mm bolt.

Now I'm just pulling the harness out and free. I'm going to pull the clips off the harness so that I can put them onto the new hub harness when I'm ready to install it.
Now you want to remove your hub. There's three bolts one in the back, one in the middle of the top, and one in the front. These are 18 mm bolts.

The front and rear ones you can get to with an impact wrench or regular wrench. The top one is a little more difficult you have to use a hand wrench. It helps if you swivel the steering which helps you get to the bolts much easier.

Then I'm taking them out. You can pry with a pry bar or a large screw driver. I'm using the screwdriver and pry against the steering knuckle.

You can see me get it apart now, just shaking it. You want to be careful not to bend up that backing plate too much. I leave that top bolt in it's very loose but it's still in there. Now the hub comes right out. Pull the harness out away from the backing plate and your hub is out.

There's this little O ring that you want to make sure goes back on correctly. If you put a new hub on, obviously, transfer it to the new hub, if you don't just make sure it's in the correct spot.

Now I'll remove this jounce bumper from the top to allow your upper control arm to fall down some more.
Where your ball joint is secured to the control arm, there are two bolts. This has been replaced before it's by bolts. If your ball joint hasn't been replaced before, you'll just see little round rivets. If it is rivets you've got use a cold chisel and just pound them to shear them right off. You're going to remove these bolts or rivets on the front, in the back and underneath everything is bolted underneath.

Then, with the ball joint shaft, I'm going to remove the cotter pin. I'm also going to remove this cotter pin and bolt from the tire rod end. This whole time, my jack here is supporting the control arm.

The best way to get at the inner bolts is to go under the shaft and hook on with your bolt. I'm just removing those four nuts right now. I am not removing the bolts from the top. I'm just taking the nuts off the bottom.

I'm also removing the cotter pin and the bolt from the ball joint. I believe it's either a 22 mm or 24 mm bolt. Okay, now here I'm removing the cotter pin and the bolt from the tire rod end. I believe that's an 18 mm or 19 mm bolt. For the tire rod end, you just hit it with a couple of good hammer hits. It comes right out. You do the same thing with the ball joint hold them down on top of the control arm and giving it a couple of whacks with the hammer.

Now, at this point, I'm taking out all the bolts from the top of the ball joint. After that, I pull down on the control arm and towards the rear of the vehicle, and the ball joint comes out.
Okay, that's how you remove your ball joint. We also have a video detailing the installation which can be found as a reply to this video. Check that out.

We hope this 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 at 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the internet and in person.

Safely raise and support your vehicle on the frame so your suspension can hang. Now that we've safely raised the vehicle, let's remove this by using a small pry bar right in this little slot. Now you can see your 22-millimeter lug nuts, remove those. And now we'll just do the same thing to the other side. It's a great idea to spray down the area. We're going to let that sit. Obviously, if your tie rod ends look like this around the adjustment area, you're going to want to do the whole thing. If for some reason you aren't, you're going to remove these two bolts and then you'll turn this out and that will break this free.

So now that I know that I am replacing the assembly as a whole, I'm going to turn the wheel all the way to the left. That's going to give me the most area to get to that inner tie rod and stud. To start, I'm going to use my 18-millimeter half-inch drive, come right up here on the outer tie rod end nut, if you need to give it a couple of bonks, make sure you get it on there. Let's loosen this up. I'm just going to take that nut and put it back on there, just a few threads to keep myself safe.

So now we're going to break the outer tie rod end free from the knuckle right here, you can use a large hammer. You could also use a pickle fork with a hammer. If you're going to go with the hammer method, just go right here on the knuckle, it should want to break free. Make sure you have the nut on there and your safety glasses. All right, that broke free, awesome. Let's remove that inner tie right end nut. For this part right here, we're going to use one of these pickle forks. Come right in through in between the inner tie rod end and this right here, going to hammer it in. Start that on just a couple threads here. Okay, that's separated. Let's start the removal process here. Now we can move along to the next step.

So one of the first things we need to do when we get to the bench is, of course, we'll put a little bit of copper Never-Seez on our threaded area, you can go right on the tie rod ends, and maybe inside the sleeve if you wanted to. Once you have done that and you have those prepped, we're going to take a measuring tape and we're going to measure from one end of this all the way to the other end. Take a quick measurement here, and take note, looks like for me it is 16 and seven-eighths. So, what I am going to do now is I'm going to get this started onto both these tie rod ends at the same time, that is called timing the tie rod ends. We'll screw it in, and then we'll keep measuring until we get to 16 and seven-eighths, which is my measurement.

Start this on, just a couple of threads here, okay. Now I am going to do the same thing for this one, just grabbing the first thread is the hardest part usually. Now that I have both those started, I'm going to try to screw this on. Okay. So that looks pretty decent. At this point, what I want to do is make sure that I have the inner tie rod end lined up with the new inner tie rod end. That looks good, and I am going to make sure that this is aiming up in the same direction as the other one. Just like that.

And the next thing that we want to do is get these bolts so they are lined up just like that. So you can see where the open area is, that is exactly where you want the bolt to be when you crimp this down. That's how it is going to hold the threads the best. Just snug this up, and we're not going to completely tighten this up yet because, of course, we're still going to have to give it a little twist when we get in the vehicle. I just want to kind of make it so it can't flop around on me. That's pretty decent. Just snug, time to get that started in there, it's important to pay attention to your inner tie rod end which has this little blank area of the shanked end, then you have the outer tie rod end that has the threaded area pretty much the whole way. Started. Start in the outer as well, let's go ahead and bottom these out. Let's torque both these nuts to 40 foot-pounds.

So now you are going to look for your cotter pin hole. And that should be a hole that goes through the stud. It needs to line up with the castle nut here. I'm going to take one of my cotter pins and just feel around, that feels like it is almost about to go through. Something that's important to remember is if the cotter pin does not go through, or it is not lined up, you don't want to loosen it so you can put the cotter pin through. You just want to tighten to the point that you can get the cotter pin locked in. Do the same to the other one, that one I can see that it is not lined up. Just going to give it a teeny bit more. Put the cotter pin through, of course, lock it down.

The next thing you want to do is make sure that your tie rods are straight so when you're looking at 'em, you want the stud to look like it's coming straight out. If it isn't, just go ahead and give it a little twist, and then double-check the other side to make sure that that one is good. If for some reason when you have one straight and the other one is turned completely like that, that's going to cause premature wear of the tie rod ends. Make sure they are both straight, and then you can torque these down to 14 foot-pounds. We're just going to double-check the tie rods now that those are snug. That looks straight, this looks straight, perfect. Let's get the wheel on, and get it to the alignment shop.

Time to get the wheel up on here. Start on one of those lug nuts. Now we're just going to start on all the lug nuts, we'll bottom them out and then we'll torque them to 120 foot-pounds. Torque these to 120 foot-pounds. That's torqued. We'll get our cover on here, awesome. And now we'll just do the same thing to the other side. The next thing you would want to do is go ahead and get yourself an alignment.