2009 Mercury Mariner Front 10 Piece Steering & Suspension Kit DIY Solutions SUS03272

What's up, guys? I'm Andy from 1A Auto. In this video I'm going to show you how to replace the front lower control arm on this 2012 Ford Escape. If you need this part or other parts for your vehicle, click the link in the description and head over to 1aauto.com.

One thing you're going to want to do anytime you do any kind of front end repair or suspension repair, you're going to want to go to a local shop and have your alignment performed otherwise you're going to have premature tire wear.

So we have the vehicle raised up in the air and we took the wheel off and now we're going to take this bolt out right here. This nut and bolt. On the backside I'm going to use a ratchet with a 13 millimeter socket on it. Back here. Like that, and then on the front side I'll use a 15 millimeter socket and ratchet to take the nut off. We'll take this nut off just like that. Going to take a small punch and a hammer and I'm going to punch the bolt through. Hammer it through. The reason why I don't want to hit it right on the threads is you're going to mushroom it over a little bit. We could leave the nut on it as well and hit it a couple of times first. Alright just put the nut back on loosely, and I'll take a bigger hammer, and I'm just going to hit it a couple of times. Just to get it to move a little bit. And I can take nut off again. Use the punch and the hammer, and punch it through the rest of the way. There we go.

So if your vehicle's very rusty you might have wanted to use some rust penetrant on that bolt taking it out but ours wasn't too bad. So I am going to use this pickle fork to separate the ball joint from the knuckle, and there is other tools you can use but this one's going to work pretty good. Separate the ball joint. You want to keep in mind if you're using a pickle fork, normally it will rip the ball joint boot, and if you're reusing the ball joint then that might not be the best tool for you. They make other tools that go around the knuckle and push down on the ball joint. But for this application, we're going to replace the lower control arm, so it doesn't matter whether we rip it or not.

Alright now I'm just going to take a pry bar. Try to separate the knuckle from the ball joint. Just pry this down. Be careful. You don't really want to put your fingers anywhere near that. There is a little hole right here you can put the pry bar. Sometimes you can just tap on the knuckle or even on the lower control arm with a hammer. Get a bigger hammer. There we go. Next thing, we're going to loosen this bolt up. I'm going to use a 15 millimeter socket and a ratchet. Can use a pry bar. Just going to tap the back of the pry bar. There we go. Now I'm going to take this bolt out. I'm going to use a 21 millimeter socket and a breaker bar. Loosen it up. Just take that out. Alright, then we can grab the control arm and slide it down like here. Put it twisted to the side then I can just slide it out.

Here's the old lower control arm. Here's the new lower control arm from 1aauto.com. Comes with the bushings, comes with the ball joint, and you're going to want to take this little cap off that's just protecting it during shipping. The ball joint looks the same. The general layout of the control arm is the same, get yours at 1aauto.com and you'll be ready to rock and roll.

So I'm going to start with the new control arm. I'm going to slide it in right here, and then I'm going to take the bolt and get this started. And then I'm going to slide the control arm down here underneath the rotor. Be careful when you're doing this because you don't want to let it go and get your fingers cut. Get behind the rotor, and we want this side to go in first. Slip that up into position. Just like that. Take the bolt. You might need to use a pry bar to pry this out so that the hole lines up. And get that bolt started. So for this bolt, it's important to torque this while the control arm is as close to ride height level as possible so then you keep the bushing lasting as long as possible. So what I want to do is just push up on the control arm a little.

Now what's recommended is to be torquing this on the ground but obviously it's very hard to get a torque wrench on this bolt while you're on the ground so that's why we're going to torque it before we install the ball joint into the knuckle. Alright so now I'm going to torque this bolt to 85 foot-pounds using a 15 millimeter socket and a torque wrench. And I'm going to tighten this bolt down just using a 21 millimeter socket and a ratchet. Then I'm going to torque this one down to 110 foot pounds. It's good. Now that those are torqued down, now I can use a pry bar. To get into the control arm there's a hole right here that you can pry and stick the pry bar through there so it's easier to pry down and get the knuckle lined up. This part, you need to be careful, keep your fingers clear.

Alright just going to pry this into place. Might have to move the knuckle a little bit, just take the pry bar. Alright just need to give that a little tap. Once it's lined up pretty good, little tap on the control arm. You really don't want to tap on where the ball joint is but you can tap on ear of the control arm. Get that to line up. To get the ball joint to line up with the knuckle, there's a little groove in the ball joint. I have to use a screw jack. If you're doing this at your house, you can use a floor jack just to put a little pressure on the lower control arm. Just raise it up. Just make sure you're careful, you don't want to hit the reluctor ring on the CV joint. That looks like it's lined up pretty good. Now I'll take the bolt and slide it through. Give a little tap on the bolt.

Now the bolt's through. I'm just going to loosen up on the screw jack. Take the nut on the bolt. Right now I'm going to take a 13 millimeter socket and ratchet. Put it on the backside of the bolt and hold that while I tighten up the nut with a 15 millimeter socket and a ratchet. Then I'm going to use this torque wrench and tighten this up with the same 15 millimeter socket. We actually sell this torque wrench at 1aauto.com. Torque is 45 foot-pounds.

At this point, we would put the tire on, put the lug nuts on, lower the vehicle and torque the wheels.

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