2003 GMC S-15 Sonoma 4 Wheel Drive Front Steering, Suspension, & Brake Kit TRQ PSA64826

This video is brought to you by 1AAuto.com your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the internet.

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.

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 1A Auto.com.

In this video, I'm going to show you how to do a front brake job on this 2003 GMC Sonoma. This truck has perfectly good brakes, so you don't see me replacing them, but I do just take them apart and put them back together so you can understand how to get the new parts from 1A Auto and install them correctly. Brake job on this truck is the same as any GMC, the Sonoma S15 pickup or the Jimmy as well as the Chevy S10 pickup and blazer. Tools you'll need are jack and jack stands, 18 mm and 19 mm sockets, ratchet handle, and a pipe or breakup bar. You'll need those because you'll probably need some extra leverage on some of those bolts. An 18 mm wrench with an additional wrench and you'll see how I use that, a large C-clamp, and a new pattern rotary kit available from 1AAuto.com, as well as a large flat blade screw driver.

Start by raising and removing the wheel entire. If you don't have access to impact tools, you'll want to loosen the lug nuts with the tire on the ground. Then raise it and support it with the jack stand and they can remove the lug nuts and remove the wheel entire. With the wheel off, you can check the condition of your brakes. The rotor, you want to just check the service. Run your back of your fingernail up along it. If you don't feel any deep grooves, that's what you want. You can see that there's still a good lip on this rotor, so we know the rotor is still plenty wide enough. You can look here. If you look back in here, you can see there's the pad and you can see there's plenty of life left in the pad, so these brakes are in good shape, but I'm going to show you how to take them apart and put them back together. Next thing you want to do is take the cap off, which you remove, these two bolts here. Before you remove those bolts, what you can do is loosen the caliper up from the pads and rotor, take a large screw driver and put it right into this hole and pry out slowly and that forces the pistons back into the caliper. These bolts are 18 mm.

I'll speed it up. You can see it takes some force to get them going, but it shouldn't take too much. They shouldn't be on there too tight. I'm just using the regular size ratchet and removing those. Now the caliper comes right on off and then put it right up here. Here are your pads. They should just kind of pull right out. Screwdriver, pry this back one out. You can see right here this is kind of a wear indicator. Plenty of life left in that pad. The pad comes out. If you need to remove and replace your rotor, you'll need to remove this caliper bracket, which is two more bolts, one there and then one up there. These bolts are 19 mm as well. I'm going to use my ratchet and put a piece of pipe on here. It's going to help me get some more leverage. This one's so close to the control arm, you'll have to use a wrench, so I put my 18 mm wrench on there, put another wrench on here like that, gives me more leverage. That should loosen up. Speed it up here again. After I get them loose, I remove those two bolts the rest of the way. I take the bracket off. I lift that bracket off and the rotor comes right off and again this one is in good shape so we can put it back on. Put this back and you put it between the rotor and your steering knuckle. Put the bolt back in at that top one, the bottom one in, start it up.

Again speed it up here as I just thread those bolts in and get them preliminarily tightened up. Since you can't get a conventional torque wrench on there, what I do is get it about as tight as you can with your first wrench and hook your second wrench on here and just probably pull it another 16th or a turn or so. The bottom one, we want to tighten it to 100-ft pounds. You want to reset the pistons in your caliper. What I've done is I've put my old pad back in there on the inside and then I have a C-clamp. I'll tighten up this C-clamp and that will force the pistons back into the caliper. Then I can remove the C-clamp. Remove the pad and you can see my pistons here are back down into the caliper. I'm going to put my pads back in. They have these little metal tabs on them that have to be there. That's how they slide back and forth in the cast iron. Front ones, same thing. You can see pads are in. You want to make sure the pads can move back and forth nice and freely.

Now let's take a caliper and you want to push the boots in and put it down that way. Then pull this boot down here and put down in place. Make sure these bolts are nice and clean. A little light coating of grease on them. They go right in. Speed it up here as we just thread those bolts in. Then you want to torque these to about 55-ft pounds. Speed it up against as we mount that wheel entire. Then you thread the lug nuts on by hand first, make sure you don't cross thread them. Then we'll use an impact wrench, just tighten them up preliminarily. Lower the vehicle down on the ground and torque them to 100 foot pounds, using a star pattern as you're tightening them. Then most importantly, before you road test your car, make sure you pump your brakes a bunch. That will reset the pistons into the right spot. You can test stop at 5-10 miles an hour, and then go out on the road.

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 888-844-3393. we're the company that's here for you on the internet and in person.

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet. 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 and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts, installed correctly--that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

This is part two. We're going to install the front hub on this 4-wheel drive S10. Same as Blazer, Jimmy, and Sonoma. Tools you're going to need are metric sockets, 10-19mm, plus some metric wrenches, jack and jack stands, a 35-mm socket for the hub nut, large screwdriver or pry bar, penetrating oil, a torque wrench and you might want to throw in a hammer and a rubber mallet, too. Here's the new 1A Auto hub versus the old one. See, leads all the same, has the same bracket, same end. Now it's going to mount the same. Everything's going to be all the same. Next step, take our old ring and put it onto the new hub. Now is as good a time as any to grease the lower ball joint, the tie rod end, and the upper ball joint. Technically it goes on here like that. Feed the harness through. The connector is going to be where that big gap is. We'll get this up in here, get everything somewhat lined up. Grab one of our bolts, make it one of the easy ones down here, put it through, work it in, get it going a little bit.

Now I'm going to speed it up. Now I'm going to work the other two bolts in. Then I'm going to use a ratchet and socket and tighten them up. Shifting the steering a little bit to get to them. You do want to try to tighten them up evenly. You don't want to just tighten one all the way up because you want to pull the hub into the steering knuckle pretty much evenly. So I'm just rotating around and tightening. After this, I'll set my torque wrench to 65 foot-pounds and torque them up. Now you tighten these up to about 65 foot-pounds. Now we're going to put the harness back in. Remember here, you've got a little 10-mm bolt there on that first clip and you got a 13-mm bolt and nut on that second clip and you have to clip it in together with the brake line. The hub harness goes in behind the brake line, so the bolt goes to the hub harness first then the brake line harness. Then it's opposite on the frame connector. The brake line goes onto the frame and then the hub harness goes on top of it. So tighten up that bolt, tighten up the frame and then... Tighten the frame, and then you can take the clip, put it onto the frame, connect them together. Once they're connected, pull your flap back down and you're all set.

Here I'm putting the rotor back on. I apologize for the poor camera work here, I didn't realize I wasn't shooting it very well. I'm putting the lug nut, just one on. Just to keep the rotor in place. Makes it easier to get the caliper on. I'm grabbing the caliper. I'm also not touching the disk or the brake pad surface. You want to try to keep them clean, keeps your brakes working better. If you do hit them, just use a little linseed oil or brake parts cleaner. Then I use the rubber mallet to persuade the caliper on there. Put the bolts in for the caliper. They should be torqued to 50 to 60 foot-pounds. The top, I didn't get a torque wrench on, so I used my well-calibrated arm and hand, as you'll see. After that, torque up the bottom one correctly. I'm going to tighten the hub nut up with an impact wrench. I'm going to watch in back here, as you can see, there's a little gap right here. This shiny ring. That will close up as I tighten and I'll just stop before that closes all the way because I want to tighten that with a torque wrench when the car is on the ground. I replaced my hub and those three bolts have been torqued. I put my brake back on, those bolts have been torqued. I reinstalled my line here. That's all tight. Now I need to put my wheel back on. I'm going to torque the lug nut to 90 foot-pounds. Now I'm going to torque the wheel lug nuts to 75 foot-pounds. Put my cap back on. Lug nut covers.

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, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the Internet and in person.

Brought to you by 1A Auto.com. Your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the internet. 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 and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts, installed correctly. That's going to save you time and money. Thank you, and enjoy the video.

In this video we'll be showing you how to replace a stabilizer link on this 1997 Pontiac Sunfire. Basically the same as any '95 to '05 Cavalier and very similar to a lot of GM front stabilizer links. All you'll need is a couple wrenches and wrench size will vary. Okay sway bar links on the Sunfire Cavalier. Obviously you want to raise and support your vehicle, and you want to raise the front wheels off the ground evenly. You don't want to just put the left wheel up in the air or the right wheel up in the air, because the stabilizer bar is designed to act against that. So you'll actually just make it more difficult for yourself to take it apart. So when you raise the vehicle, on these vehicles you probably want to place the jack right here on this pinch weld behind the front wheel. You can raise it here and then support it here, and then raise the other side and do the same thing. Okay so here we are under the vehicle. We're looking towards the front of the car. Here's your stabilizer link, you can see these have been replaced recently.

So I'm just going to show you how to take them out and put them in. What can happen on these is these rubber bushings can wear out and then you have a metal on metal, or metal on metal down here. Also, what can happen is these studs can rust and just break. Some symptoms of your sway bar links being broken is your car will lean more in turns, and also another symptom if one of these bushings wears out, you'll hear a clanging when you go over bumps when your car is straight, but then if you're turning and you hit a bump you may not hear the clang because the sway bar will be counteracting the turn and just pulling itself tight against the metal. So these replacement sway bar, these replacement links are 9/16ths. Probably the originals are 13 millimeters. But it's pretty easy. You just want to get under here. Most likely if you have your originals on here, once you start doing this they're probably going to break. You just remove this bolt, you need to hold this nut with a wrench. So there's your link out. So when you put the link back in, you want to put a washer on, and then a bushing, and then you put the stud up through the control arm.

You put the bushing on with these stepped sides go into the holes. So it goes into that hole there. You can see here that stepped side goes into the hole in all cases. Whenever the bushing's against metal, you want them in the hole like that. So we have a bushing, put that up through. Now we need a washer. Then after the washer, there's a spacer. Then another washer. Then a bushing, and again the stepped side goes up into the stabilizer bar. Then a bushing on the other end, with the stepped side going down into the stabilizer bar. And then a washer. Generally these washers are just a little bit dished to hold the, actually they look pretty flat. They're a little dished to hold the bushing kind of within itself. They squeeze together. This is a lock nut so it's only going to thread on a little ways at first, and then you're going to get some resistance. Take your wrench, and hold. Torque specs on this is 13 foot pounds, so it doesn't have to be too tight. But what I like to do is kind of go slow at first. Make sure everything gets seated correctly. Make sure all these bushings are going where they need to go. Go a little further. Basically this goes all the way, the bolt goes all the way until it bottoms out. And that's basically it.

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

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com your source for quality replacement parts and the bet service on the internet.

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 twenty plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

Okay this is kind of part two we are going to install the ball joint on this S-10 four by four the same as any S-10, S-15, Blazer or Jimmy. The tools you're going to need are various size metric sockets including a thirty five millimeter socket for the hub, jack, jack stands, screwdriver, pry bar, cold chisel, air chisel if you're replacing your original ball joints, some penetrating oil, torque wrench and also a rubber mallet and a hammer.

Okay we are going to start out just to clean up the top of the upper control arm just to get some of the dirt and stuff off of it and now here I'm just lining up the boot on the ball joint and then I'm going to put the ball joint down into the steering knuckle and push down and then put the nut onto the ball joint. Okay and once I tighten that up a little bit by hand and then I just push the steering knuckle down onto the control arm so it's in place.

Okay and now what I'm going through in fast motion here is I'm just putting the four bolts, the ball joint comes with brand new bolts I'm putting the four bolts down in and the nuts on and then I'm starting them with my ratchet so I'm just putting the bolts down in and starting the nuts on the other end and then once this slows down I will be torqueing them and you torque these nuts to about twenty five foot pounds. So you can see here I'm torqueing them and then I go across and torque one on the front and torque one on the back and then torque the other back and then torque the front. So you kind of go in a criss-cross motion. Okay I'm finishing up here torqueing it.

Okay and now I'm going to put the tire rod end down in and put the bolt on. Okay and I'm torqueing the bolt to about fifty five foot pounds and then I basically look to see where the hole is because the nut has ridges in it for the cotter pin to go through and I can see that I just need to tighten it up here just a little bit more so that the cotter pin will go through. So now I'll knock the cotter pin through. It shouldn't take much if you're doing it right to get the cotter pin through and then bending it with some pliers. Okay and then I'm going to repeat that procedure for the lower ball joint. I'm putting it on and torqueing the nut to fifty five foot pounds and checking it out to see where the cotter pin is lined up and tighten it up a little bit more so you have a clear shot. Okay not the best shot of this here but down on the bottom right you can see a little socket I'm just putting the grease fitting in right there.

Okay no is as good of a time as any to grease the lower ball joint, the tire rod end and then the upper ball joint. Okay here I'm actually putting the jounce bumper back in. You just put it up in and put the bolt on top and tighten it up. Okay preparing to put the hub on just putting the O-ring on the hub. This goes on here like that and put it through and the connector is going to be where that big gap is. I'm just going to get this up in here and get it somewhat lined up, grab one of our bolts and make it one of the easy ones down here and thread it through and torque it in and get it going a little bit.

Okay now I'm going to speed it up a little bit and I'm just going to work the other two bolts in and then I'm going to use the ratchet and socket and tighten them up shifting the steering a little bit to get to them and you do want to try to tighten them up evenly. You don't just want to tighten one all the way up you want to pull the hub into the steering knuckle pretty much evenly so I'm just kind of rotating around and tightening and then after this I will set my torque wrench to sixty five foot pounds and torque them up.

Now you take it up to about sixty five foot pounds. Now we are going to put the harness back in. Okay so remember here you have a little ten millimeter bolt on that first clip and then you've got a thirteen millimeter bolt and nut on that second clip and you have to clip it in together with the brake line. The hub harness goes in behind the brake line so the bolt goes through the hub harness first and then the brake line harness and then it's opposite on the frame connector the brake line goes onto the frame and the hub harness goes on top of it. Okay so tighten up that bolt, tighten up the frame and then you can take the clip and put it onto the frame and connect them together and then once they're connected pull your flap back down and then you're all set.

Okay here I'm putting the rotor back on and I apologize for the poor camera work here I didn't realize that I wasn't shooting it very well. I'm putting the lug nut just one on just to kind of keep the rotor in place it makes it easier to get the caliper on. Okay now I'm grabbing the caliper. I'm also not touching the disc or the brake pad services. You want to try to keep them clean it keeps your brakes working better. If you do hit them just use a little linseed oil or brake parts cleaner and then I use a rubber mallet to try to persuade the caliper on there, put the bolts in for the caliper they should be torqued to fifty to sixty foot pounds. The top I didn't get a torque wrench on so I used my well calibrated arm and hand as you'll see. After that, torque up the bottom one correctly.

Okay so I'm going to tighten the hub nut with an impact wrench and I'm going to watch back here and you can see that there's a little gap right here this shiny ring and that will close up as I tighten and I will just stop before that closes all the way because I want to tighten that with a torque wrench when the car is on the ground.

So I re-did my lower ball joint those four bolts are done and the bottom one is torqued with a cotter pin and I had this apart and that's torqued with a cotter pin. Okay I replaced my hub and those three bolts have been torqued. Okay I put my brake back on and those bolts have been torqued and I re-installed my line here. Okay and that's all tight so now I can put my wheel back on and I'm going to torque the hub nut to ninety foot pounds. Okay and now I'm going to torque the wheel lug nuts to seventy five foot pounds. I put my cap back on and the lug nut covers.

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 fee free to call us toll free 888-844-3393. We are the company that's here for you on the internet and in person.