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Install Tip: When replacing steering components, have a professional alignment performed afterwards. This ensures proper tracking and even tire wear.
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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 a front strut on this 2002 Ford Escape. The strut is the same for any 2001-2011 Escape, although getting the wheel off may be a little different for different vehicles. We show you the driver's side. Obviously, you want to replace struts in pairs and the passenger side is the same procedure. Tools you'll need are a jack and jack stands. You'll 10-19 mm sockets and wrenches. You'll need the ratchet, some extensions, a breaker bar or a pipe, because you'll need some extra leverage on some of those nuts and bolts. Flat blade screwdriver, large hammer, a 5 mm Allen wrench, and a torque wrench.
First, with the vehicle on the ground, you're going to remove the four bolts at the top of the strut right here in the engine compartment. Use a little bit of penetrating oil, make it a little easier to get them off. Let that sit for a minute. These bolts should only be tightened to 35 foot pounds, so they should come off pretty easy and they are 14 mm. Now, using a jack, raise the vehicle up off the ground, putting the jack right underneath the front control arm. Then make sure you put a safety jack stand underneath the frame rail there. Next, remove the wheel and tire. If you don't have the benefit of air tools, loosen the lug nuts while the wheel is still on the ground, then raise and support the vehicle and remove the tire the rest of the way.
Now we're going to have to remove this bolt here, which allows these brackets to just kind of move to the side. We'll need an Allen wrench and a wrench to remove this bolt that holds the stabilizer link. Then there's two large bolts here that we need to remove. Again, coat everything with penetrating oil and let them sit for a while. Again here I'll use a little fast motion as I remove that. The bolt that holds the bracket in place is a 10 mm and it can be a little difficult. In fact, you may break it on some vehicles. If you do break it, you'll have to just source a similar bolt from the hardware store. Okay, one thing I didn't go over, there is a clip that holds the brake line in, just use a large screwdriver and pry that clip out. It comes out pretty easily. Then we'll let the brake line down and out of your way.
Okay now, this probably about the most difficult part. I've got a 14 mm wrench on the nut that connects the stabilizer to the strut, then I take another wrench, connect it to it and that gives me some extra leverage and I can start the nut spinning. Then as you get it looser, usually the stud that's part of the stabilizer link will start spinning as well. See here, I take the 5mm Allen wrench and put it into the stud and the stabilizer and work it in there really well. It's usually kind of rusted in there. Maybe take a small screwdriver, clean it out a little bit. Really work that Allen wrench in there well and then hold the stud with the Allen wrench. Okay, this is where it gets difficult. If you have a torch or a Sawzall, I could recommend that you cut the stabilizer link stud and then just put a new one in, but most of the time you want to save that. Basically what you do is you loosen the nut up as much as you can while you're holding the Allen wrench and once you can't loosen it anymore, then you tighten it back up. Spray it with penetrating oil again, loosen it up again, tighten it up. Spray it with penetrating oil, keep loosening it and I probably did this a total probably of about 15-20 times and finally it worked the lock nut all the way off.
Okay, so now we're on to the large bolts that hold the strut at the lower end. You can see I have an 18 mm socket and I'm actually using a pipe and a ratchet. The pipe gives me some extra leverage. What I do is I position the wrench right up against the vehicle and then pull with the pipe. Okay, then we'll fast forward here as I use my impact wrench, put it on there and get that bolt off the rest of the way. Okay, here on the second bolt, you're going to see the bolt actually breaks and that's probably going to happen just about half the time with these. Okay, use a hammer and a punch to start driving the bolts out and then you can let down the jack that releases most of the pressure off the strut and then the bolts will come out and then you remove the strut. Okay, so here is our original strut, and you can see that the spring is actually broken. This vehicle was making a clunking noise whenever you turned the wheel and sometimes when you started out and stopped.
Here's our new strut from 1A Auto. The spring is assembled. It's got all the right brackets and everything on it. Just going to remove the nuts from the top here. Okay, so now we're going to take the new strut and make sure that the bracket that goes around the steering knuckle's pointing out, put it down through between the tie rod and the lower control arm and then bring it up in to place. Kind of get the lower mount set on the steering knuckle, so it kind of is now roughly in place. Now you can go up top and just take your nuts and, if you need to, you can jack up the jack a little bit, but just get those four studs on top in place, put those nuts on, and then just kind of preliminarily tighten them up; you'll torque them later. Okay, from here on out, it's pretty much a reverse of the procedure. You can see I lift the steering knuckle up and kind of work it in the position and get both of the bolts through the strut and into the steering knuckle. Then put on washers and lock nuts and obviously, because one of them broke, I'm using two brand new bolts. Now here I'm jacking the car back up to put the weight back on to the suspension. Tighten and torque these bolts to 85 foot pounds. Torque these upper bolts to 35 foot pounds.
Just speed up as I do those last two. Okay, and now to put the stabilizer link back together. It goes back together a lot easier than it comes apart, needless to say or regardless, I just use a little bit of penetrating oil on there anyways, then use the 5 mm Allen wrench and the 14 mm wrench and tighten that up. It does go a lot faster when you're at about seven times speed too. Now, put the bracket back in place and put that 10 mm bolt, again, if that bolt broke use a, it's probably about a M8 self tapping bolt that just kinds of bolts into the strut. Then put the brake line back in place. Use a small hammer to tap the clip in place. Then just check and make sure nothing's rubbing or chafing on anything. Now, put your wheel and tire back in place. Put the lug nuts on and just kind of tighten them preliminarily. You want to torque them once the vehicle's back on the ground and secured. Set your torque wrench to a hundred foot pounds and then tighten them up using a star pattern as the order and then put your cap back in place.
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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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What's up, guys? I'm Andy from 1A Auto. In this video, I'm going to show you how to replace the front struts 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.
I've raised and supported the vehicle, and I took the tire off, and now we're going to take this nut off. I'm going to use a pry bar and a 1 1/4 socket and a breaker bar. I'm going to use the pry bar to prevent the hub from spinning. I'm just going to set this up, just like that. Spin this around, and then the ground is going to support that from spinning. Just loosen this up.
Now that nut is loose. Now I can raise the vehicle up to chest level. I'm just going to use some pliers. I'm going to take this clip off that holds the brake line on. Just grab it and slide this out, just like that. And we can take this brake hose; slide it out of our way.
I'm going to take a 10mm socket, extension and a ratchet. Take this bolt out, right here. This holds the bracket for the ABS wiring harness. It's pretty rusty. If you have to, put a little rust penetrant on there. Pull that out. Slide that out of the way. Just so I don't break it, I'm going to take the bolt out, right here, that holds the ABS sensor in. I might be able to do it without taking this out, but I don't want to break the wire. Take that out. Pull this out of here. Slide that out of the way.
Before I take this nut off, I'm going to use a little bit of rust penetrant because—just make it easier taking it off. Let that soak for a little bit. With a 15mm wrench, I'm going to slide that over the nut, and then I can hold the stud with a 5mm Allen socket and a ratchet. Just put the ratchet on and tighten, and I'm going to loosen this. Loosen that up; get the nut off, like this. The backside, here—I can just take a 17mm wrench, hold the stud from spinning while I loosen up the nut. Alright. Pull that nut off and slide that out.
We want to take these bolts out. I'm going to take the—loosen up the nuts, right here. Before I do that, I'm going to spray them down with some rust penetrant. I'm going to take an 18mm wrench, 18mm socket and a breaker bar. I'm going to loosen up the nut—both of these nuts—and loosen up the lower one. Before I take these nuts off, I'm just going to take a hammer and I'm just going to tap them—tap the bolts out. The reason I left the nuts on is so that I don't mushroom the end of the bolts. Otherwise, you won't be able to reuse them.
Then I'm going to take a punch and the hammer. Just hammer it out, like this. This is going to move a little bit. Watch your fingers. Then I'll hammer this lower one out as well. Make sure you check the brake hose. Make sure there's not too much tension on the brake hose. That's good. Take those out and set them aside. Alright. So, these strut poles are not slotted, so you don't really have to worry about marking this. If these were slotted, you'd want to take a marker and just go around where the bolt holes are, or where the knuckle goes into the strut, so that when you put it back together, the alignment isn't very far off. It'll be less far off.
We lowered the vehicle and we opened the hood. And now we want to take these four nuts out, but we want to make sure we don't touch the nut in the middle because if you took that out, the spring is going to come separated from the strut and then it could be dangerous. So, just focus on those four. I'm going to use a 14mm socket and a ratchet. When I take this last nut off, I'll loosen this up. Before I take it off completely, I'm going to want to grab underneath here. Grab the strut itself—if you can grab it by the spring and hold it up, while I take that last nut off. Or you can have a partner helping you do this. Then once it's off, slide it down, just like that.
Here's our old strut assembly. Here's our new strut and spring assembly from 1aauto.com. As you can see, they look very similar. They both have the same springs. They both have a mount at the top. The new one comes with new nuts. The brackets on the bottom are the same—it's the bracket that holds the brake hose on, and the bracket for the sway bar link. These look the same. Get yours at 1aauto.com and you'll be ready to rock and roll.
Alright. So, before I install this, I want to take these nuts off. Then we're going to slide underneath, here, and slide it up. Get the studs lined up. Take the nut. Once you get some of the nuts on, then you can let go with a strut assembly—let it hang. I'll take a—for the new nuts, they're 15mm, so I'll use a 15mm socket and a ratchet. Now I'm going to use the 15mm socket and a torque wrench. I'm going to torque these to 35 foot-pounds.
Now we're going to reinstall this to the knuckle. Just slide the knuckle up. You might have to grab underneath. If you're doing this on the ground, you might be able to use a floor jack to raise this up a little bit. Pull that up. Take the strut bolts. Get that one in and then get this one in. Get the nut. Install that one; install this one. Take my 18mm wrench, 18mm socket and ratchet. I'll snug this up before I torque it. Then with a torque wrench, I'm going to torque this to 85 foot-pounds. And same with the lower one.
We want to reinstall this bracket for the ABS wiring harness. Get that lined up. Take this bolt. Get that started. I'll use a 10mm socket and extension just to get this tightened by hand, and then I'll snug it up and just use a ratchet and snug it up—not too tight.
Then I'll take the brake hose; get this lined up. There is some little keyways in the hose, so it only goes on a certain way. It looks like it goes on like that. Just make sure it's not twisted at all—up top or down below. Take the clip. Slide the clip in.
I might have to take a small hammer and just give it a tap. Tap the clip in. Now slide this in position—top. You might have to move this stud down a little bit. Just grab it; slide it down, just like that. You can line that up. Take the 15mm nut. I'm going to use my 15mm ratchet wrench, and it's short Allen—4mm Allen wrench. Now snug that up. Take that off.
Now I'm going to take a 15mm socket on a torque wrench and tighten this nut down to 46 foot-pounds. Now I'm going to take a pry bar. Just get in between these studs, right here. Have that set against the floor. I'll take a 1 1/4 socket and a torque wrench, and I'm going to torque this axle nut to 221 foot-pounds. Be careful when doing this. It's a lot of torque. There we go. 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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