Replaces
Part Details
Install Tip: When replacing steering components, have a professional alignment performed afterwards. This ensures proper tracking and even tire wear.
Item Condition:
New
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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 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.
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Hi, I'm Mike from 1AAuto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years! We're dedicated to delivering quality auto parts, expert customer service, and fast and free shipping, all backed by our 100% satisfaction guarantee. We've created thousands of videos to help you install our parts with confidence. That saves you time and money, so visit us at 1AAuto.com, your trusted source for quality auto parts.
The pitman arm is attached to the steering box itself, and you can find it right up on the driver side of the vehicle. It is right here attached to the steering box, and then attached to part of the steering linkage as well. Typically, these wear out right at the ball joint end of it. It comes as a whole lot of slop in your steering wheel.
To access the large nut on the bottom of the Pitman arm, you have to actually loosen or remove the steering box from the frame of the truck, and we'll start that by removing the three 21 millimeter bolts that are on the driver side of the frame that hold the steering box to the frame itself. We'll start grabbing a 21 millimeter socket and a large ratchet. There's going to be a lot of force on these, so we want to use a long ratchet to do it. Right here on the ball joint end of the Pitman arm, you're going to want to remove this 21 millimeter nut with a socket and an extension. Hopefully it goes on.
With the nut off, now we have to separate the Pitman arm from the steering linkage. There's a couple ways to do this. You could use a pickle fork. I actually prefer using a puller because that is usually the most successful way that I have. You can usually rent these from a hardware store or a local auto parts store, or they're actually not too expensive to just purchase. We'll put a 16 millimeter on the puller and start putting some force on it. You basically swing it up your steering box, pull down on the linkage, and now it is somewhat out of the way.
Now you have access to the 34 millimeter nut on the bottom of the Pitman arm. This 34 millimeter nut is really, really tight, and the steering box is obviously loosened from the frame. So we need to hold the steering box in place somehow while we loosen this nut with a very large ratchet. I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a large wrench, put it on this side of the frame, and run one of the steering box bolts through it and back into the steering box. Now I'm going to put a 34 millimeter socket on there with a breaker bar or a half inch drive ratchet that's quite long, and hopefully we can crack this loose.
Now we're going to take our puller and put it on the Pitman arm itself. Going to have to wiggle the steering box around a little bit and kind of get things out of the way to make sure that you have room to actually use the puller. You always want to make sure it's centered on the bolt as well because the puller won't work if it's crooked. We're going to use a ratcheting wrench in this case to tighten up the puller. The Pitman arm is not coming off with the puller, so we're going to throw a little heat on it to try and loosen it up. All right. With the Pitman arm loose, you should be able to pry it right off the steering box and hopefully pull it out of the truck.
As you can see, we got the old Pitman arm and the new Pitman arm. If you're buying a Pitman arm for one of these trucks, you'll need to know if it's a four-spline or a three-spline. What that means is inside here, in this case there's four wider splines so it can only go on one of four directions. You can see there's one here, there's one on here, and if you turn it 90 degrees you can see there's one here and one here. On the three-spline, it's triangular. You can see that they are essentially the same part. The new one comes with the castle nut and the cotter pin so that you can set it up right. It'll look and fit and function just like the original.
I prefer to have it greased before I put it in the truck because it's a little easier to grease now than when it's installed, so I have it clamped in the vice, put the grease can on it, and then just add the grease until it's full. You'll know it's full because it kind of oozes out the bottom seal. You don't want to blow out the seal completely, but as soon as you see it pop up the seal you know it's full. All right, before we put the Pitman arm back in, I'm going to take this bolt out of the steering box that I was using earlier to hold it in place. It'll give me a little freedom to work around it.
Now we can take our new Pitman arm and slide it up into place. The Pitman arm only fits on one of four ways, so there's a very good chance that you're just going to plop it on and get it right the first time. If it was wrong, it would be 90 degrees off in either direction, so I'm very confident that we have it right because it is a four-spline setup and this is really the way it came off. Next we can take the washer and the large 34 millimeter nut and put it onto the steering box.
All right, with the bolt loosely in place we can get the steering box to a place where we can get our 34 millimeter socket onto there. Then we can tighten it up. You're going to want to tighten this basically as tight as you can. If you have some air tools, air tools work really great for this. Now we're going to put this ball joint end of the Pitman arm back into the steering linkage just like that, and we'll hand tighten the castle nut onto the Pitman arm.
Now we can put in the three steering box bolts. We're just going to hand tighten them each for now. Now we're going to take your 21 millimeter socket and ratchet and we can tighten up these steering box bolts. Now we can tighten up this one. The new one actually has a 19 millimeter nut on it, so we'll just tighten that up. You'll want to line it up with the hole in the center of the bolt so that we can put a cotter pin through it to hold it in place.
Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.
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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 Don from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and the next time you need a part for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.
In this video, we're going to show you how to replace a sway bar link on this 2002 Chevy Suburban, and it's the same part and similar process on these Suburbans from 2000 and 2006. We show you on the passenger's side, but on the driver's side it's the same procedure. The items you need for this include a new sway bar link from 1AAuto.com, a 14mm and 22mm socket and ratchet, locking pliers, a hammer, and a reciprocating saw depending on the condition of your vehicle.
Remove your hubcap by loosening up these lug nut caps and pulling the hub cap. Now, you want to remove the lug nuts. If you don't have air powered tools, you want to do this while the vehicle is on the ground. You can loosen them preliminarily, raise the vehicle and remove the lug nuts the rest of the way, and pull the wheel out. Using locking pliers, clip on to the top of your stabilizer link, and then remove this 14mm bolt. We'll just fast forward as Mike does this.
Now, you want to just hammer the link through. If the link doesn't move, you may have to use a reciprocating saw and cut it. Up top is the old part; below is the new part from 1A Auto. You can see they're identical, and they'll fit exactly the same. You want to put your stabilizer link back into place, starting with a washer and a grommet, then through the hole, then another grommet, then a washer, then the tube; then, before going through the next hole, another washer and grommet; then, on the top another grommet and another washer, then the nut.
Here, we just put the jack underneath the link. That's just to push it up through and compress the washers a little bit so that you can get the nut on the other end. Once I get another nut on, you'll see I just release the jack. You want to obviously be supporting the vehicle with jack stands, and then use your jack to push the bolt of the link up through. Then, you want to tighten up the sway bar link, and you basically want to tighten it up until the rubber bushings are compressed enough so that they're the same diameter as the washers.
Put the wheel back in place, then replace each of your lug nuts and tighten them up. You want to tighten them preliminarily, lower the vehicle, then tighten them the rest of the way. Torque each lug nut in a crossing pattern to 100 foot-pounds. Replace the hubcap, and just 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.
