1996 GMC K2500 Truck Front 10 Piece Steering & Suspension Kit TRQ PSA59029

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This is part two of doing the Pitman Arm on this '96 Tahoe, which is the same as any '88 -'98 GM truck, or '92 - '99 SUV with four-wheel drive. Again, a little refresher on the tools that you'll need.

Believe it or not, I actually forgot to film... or, I actually messed up and I didn't film pulling the Pitman Arm off, so I'm just going to show you how to use the Pitman Arm puller and the tool on - this is actually the idler arm. This is the same idea, you would just be doing it on the steering box. You put the tool on like that, and then put your wrench on there and pull it, and that breaks it right free. Once we've used the puller, we can take the old arm off and put the new one on. There are four marks, or four larger teeth that make sure that you put the arm on in the right position. The best thing is just take the old one right off and then put the new one right back on in the same position. That way, you know that you have it centered correctly.

We'll put the big lock washer back on... actually, what we might want to do is put the nut on first, tighten it a little bit, which presses the arm on, and then take it off of the lock washer. Then, right up in here you can see, here's our steering coupler. The bolt is to the frame side, and it's basically straight up and down, so you want to have your steering box ready to go the same way. So, it's ready to go up in there. This flat spot here is what aligns with that bolt, so then, basically, take your box and put it in there. Now we've got our steering box up in there. Now take a bolt, feed it through, and you can see it come out on this side. Try and position the steering box so the bolt will go in, and then once you've got the bolt started, just reach up on top of the steering box, make sure your hoses are free - they're not pinched in between the frame and the box. Wrap the third one here.

Here's that Pitman Arm, and here's where it hooks into our steering, and while we still have the box loose a little bit, just move that all into place, and then just start this nut on there for right now. Before you actually tighten up the steering box to the frame, you'll want to connect your linkage here. You can see right down there is the end of the steering box, and this, I have this rubber boot pulled back. This telescopes back and forth, and what you want to do is, you can see there's a flat spot here on the gear, and then there's also a flat spot in your coupler, which I have right at the top now, so you basically want to push your shaft down on there and lid on. Then, put the bolt in, and you want to tighten this bolt up to about 35- 40 foot-pounds. Okay, we've reconnected and tightened both the power steering hoses, and they are different-sized fittings, so you shouldn't have any problem.

I'm going to torque these bolts to 120 foot-pounds. I'm going to torque this nut to 80 foot-pounds. I'm going to put in our new Pitman Arm came with a cotter pin and lock it, and it looks like I need to tighten it another quarter turn. I push the cotter pin through and pull it down around to lock it. Obviously, you're going to want to put your wheel back on, and when it's down on the ground, you're going to want to torque those lug nuts to 120 - 140 foot-pounds. Now, here I am adding some power steering fluid and, basically, you want to fill it to the level it's supposed to be, turn the car on, turn the steering wheel back and forth a few times, and then refill it until it's at the right levels. Then the last step is some grease on this fitting, and it should be all set.

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 source 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 experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1A Auto dot 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're going to replace the idler arm on this '96 Tahoe. This is a full drive truck so it's the same as any '98, or '88 to '98 GM truck and '92 to 2000 SUV. Tools you'll need are various millimeter sockets, joint fork and hammer, a tie rod or an idler arm puller, a torque wrench, telescoping magnet and an 18 millimeter wrench.

First, using a 19 millimeter wrench or your tire iron, remove your front. Using a 15 millimeter wrench, remove this front shield. Then, we're zooming in here and this is a 24 millimeter bolt that holds the idler arm on to the steering linkage. We're going to use a joint fork, we're just going to put that right in between the joint where the idler arm and the steering linkage is, zoom out here and then, just use a good-sized hammer and just force that fork right between the joint and separate that joint. The idler arm assembly is held on by three bolts. You can see the backside of them there. You get to them through the frame through access holes right there. You can see my wrench is through one and then the other two are right near them.

We'll speed up going through and removing those three bolts. Note have a telescoping magnet available for when you drop those bolts into the frame as I do a couple of times. What I'm doing here is pulling the idler assembly away from the frame, and at the same time with the other hand, pushing the idler arm up and away from the steering linkage, or actually pulling the steering linkage down. Eventually it comes loose enough and comes right out. This is a 24 millimeter. You want to use this puller and this is a rubber gasket here, pretty much just have to force it into your puller, pull that right off. My new one; right back into place.

The trouble you run into is when you try to put this back together, right back and these two go to the back when you try and put this back together, this is a lock nut and wind up turning the shaft. What I'm doing, I got a big old bolt from another project. I put that on there and what happens this will go in enough and when I hit that other nut, it'll start pressing this on to the shaft. Then, I can use the arm itself to pull the shaft. I put my lock nut back on.
Using a magnet, I took out my other two bolts so I have that top one in. I'm going to use an extension and hold that bolt in place, assembly up in here and hang in on that bolt.

I will put the nut up on that bolt and then basically repeat the step for the two bolts, put them right in to my extension with my socket, feed them through. See the bolt come through, put it on to the assembly and put the nut back on and then same thing with the third one. Feed it through, see the back of my head and then, put the nut on. Before I tighten those up, I'll turn my attention over to the steering gear. Here I pull the steering gear down and on to the joint for the idler arm and then just put the nut on hand tight. Now we'll go back to tightening up those three bolts. You want to use torque wrench and tighten them up to 80-foot pounds. This 22 millimeters and tighten these up to 80-foot pounds as well. Just a little tighter so we can fit that cotter pin through.

We'll put a grease gun in there and make sure we hit that grease footing to get it properly lubed up. Put your shield back on real quick with the four 15-millimeter bolts. Over here, we're just going to put that little pin back into the harness that was holding our airbag sensor there. We'll speed up putting the tire back on. Put on the lug nuts, tighten them a little bit, then lower the car down and torque them to about a hundred twenty to a hundred forty foot-pounds and then put your cap back on.

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 serves you on the Internet and in person.

Once you've safely raised and supported your vehicle so you can see underneath, you wanna remove this plate. If you take out these two bolts, this should swing down far enough to see right there. Let's use our 15-millimeter socket to remove this plate as well. That way there we'll have some room to get into the front end with our pickle fork. Remove this.

The next thing we're gonna do is remove this nut right here. Use your 22-millimeter socket. Now that we have the nut off right here, we're gonna come right from this side with our pickle fork and we're gonna try to separate this joint right here. If you wanna spray it with some penetrant, it's probably a great idea. There we go.

Okay, so I've got my ratchet with my extension and my 18-millimeter going through the frame holding that bolt side. The next thing I wanna do is remove the nut on the inside area of the frame. Let's do the same to all three mounting bolts. Now let's just push these bolts in a little bit. Obviously, we don't want them to fall out into the frame. If they do, you just use a magnet, you can grab them out. But by pushing them in at least towards the frame. Oh, it fell into the frame like I said it would. Now we can lift this up and out of here.

Now it's gonna be time to get this together. It comes with a locking nut, so you don't necessarily have to use any thread locker. Put this arm so that the stud is facing down, just like this. Take your nut. If you were to look inside there, you can see that there's an Allen head socket, so we'd use the according Allen head. Can hold the center, and then we're gonna turn the nut using a 24-millimeter wrench until it's nice and tight. Okay, bottomed out right there. Give it a couple extra bonks here. That's nice and tight.

So it's a great idea to use a magnet from the outside of the frame and take out at least two of those bolts that are up there. I like to leave just one. That way there it's a couple less things that I have to worry about pushing through as I get this up and lined up. It's much better to just have one up there. I can have a socket with an extension holding it still, and I'll get that one kind of snugged up a little bit, and then I'll start on the others.

I'm gonna get this shaft right inside this arm. That's gonna be the super important part. Okay, now I'm gonna twist this until all the rest of it lines up, right about like that. Now, I'm gonna use my extension from the other side, I got it through already, see if I can turn this in, get it started. There we go. That one's through. I'm gonna start the nut on there real quick. Should come with a washer. If it came with a washer, the washer goes on the bolt, and then, of course, the nut. It's a great idea to use a little bit of thread locker as well. Goes right up on there. Now there's no chance for this bolt to fall out. Let's continue on by doing the same to the other two. So now it's time to snug these up. I've got my 18-millimeter wrench on the bolt end through the frame there, and I'm gonna go ahead and use my 18-millimeter swivel socket to snug these up. That's nice and tight. Do the same to all three.
Okay, all three are nice and tight. That looks great. Let's move along to torque this to 40 foot-pounds. All right, let's do the same to all the rest. Let's get this on here. We're just gonna snug it up, and then we're gonna torque it to 40 foot-pounds. That's 40. Now you just wanna make sure that the slots on your castle nut are lined up with the hole that goes through here for the cotter pin. Once it's lined up, you put it through and make sure you lock it down. If it isn't lined up, you need to continue tightening until it is. Let's get that locking cotter pin in here. Slides right through. Like I said, make sure you peen it over that way there there's no way this nut can come loose. All right, let's get the plate up here. Let's go ahead and get our shield up here.

One of the first things we want to do when we start this job is, of course, to make sure the steering wheel will not be able to spin around and around and around. So, you can do that with something as simple as a bungee cord, just secure it to anything you can, whatever it reaches. For me personally, I'm just going to go right here because it's nice and close. Put it around there. Perfect. That's not going to be able to go around. We don't have to worry about the airbag anymore. Once you've safely raised and supported your vehicle so you can see underneath, you want to remove this plate. If you take out these two bolts, this should swing down, far enough to see right there. Let's use our 15-millimeter socket to remove this plate as well. The next thing we're gonna do is remove this cotter pin here so we can get the nut off. Now, it's time to remove the nut that holds the Pitman arm to the center link here. Use your 22-millimeter. The next thing we're going to use is a pickle fork, and we're going to try to separate this joint right here. If you want to spray down the area with some penetrant, it's probably a great idea. That's separated nice and easy. We can move along. So, now, we got to get this cover off of the steering shaft here. There's a little tab that you'd want to push to try to get around this. Then you should be able to slide it up. If you can't, you can try using a screwdriver. That looks decent. We can see where our little pinch bolt is right here. We're going to remove that, and then we'll get the steering shaft up and away from here.

Now, let's use an 11-millimeter to remove this bolt. Let's go ahead and spray down this area pretty good. Use your pry bar, go in between the shaft and the power steering box, and you should be able to move it. Once you're sure it's moving around pretty easily, we're going to continue on by removing the shaft from the box itself. There we are. That's completely released. Let's move along. Now, we're going to use an 18-millimeter crow's foot to get right down here on this line so we can remove the pair of them. If you want to spray them down with some penetrant, it's probably a great idea. Okay. So, I can see that the line is spinning with the actual fitting. So, I'm just going to try to work that back and forth a little bit. I'm going to spray it again real quick and see if I can get it to break free. I'm just going to take my bar along the top and just try to cause some vibration to see if I can get that penetrant to work its way in between the line and the fitting. Obviously, I don't want to damage the line in any way. If you poke a hole in the line, well, go ahead and buy yourself a new one. There we are. We've got those two separated now a little bit, so it's at least spinning. Let's make sure we put a nice recycling bucket underneath the vehicle to catch the power steering fluid that's bound to come out. Here we are. Got the fluid coming out. We're going to make sure that goes right into the collection bucket so we can recycle it properly. We'll set this aside and we're going to do the same thing to this line right here. There we go. Now, inside the driver's side wheel well, you're going to see three bolts sticking through the frame. Just remove all 3 of these bolts right here using your 21-millimeter socket. If you can't get this one, you could just try to bend this metal a little bit and then, of course, we'll form it back to the way it needs to go.

Let's see if we can finagle the box out of here now. There it is. Next thing we're gonna do is remove this nut that holds the Pitman arm on. Let's just make sure that we've got the right Pitman arm. Looks good. You'll notice if you look inside here, it actually has these little keyways in it. So, just kind of make sure that you're facing in the general direction when you take this off and it should pretty much line up because you really can't mess it up. Here we go, 34-millimeter. Get that lock washer off of there. We'll set these aside. Usually, this is on there pretty good and it feels like it is. At this point, we're going to use a Pitman arm puller, and we're going to separate these two pieces. So, now, we're going to use a Pitman arm puller, and that's the tool that's going to go right over the Pitman arm. It's going to have a little piton that's going to drive down in the center of the shaft and it's going to actually lift up at the same time on the Pitman arm to separate it from the sector shaft. Get that tool on here. Oh, that one came off nice and easy. It's always a good idea to spray them down. It's helpful. Awesome. Now, you just clean up this area, make sure you don't have any gunk or anything like that. Once you've done that, we're going to go ahead and take this piece and we'll get it on there. Let's get our new Pitman arm on here. Like I said, it should line right up with the keyway slots there. That feels great. We have this aiming in this direction. You don't want it aiming towards the box, okay? Make sure you get your locking washer on there. If you want to use a little bit of thread locker, we'll call it your prerogative, but we're using a locker washer. So, you don't have to. Let's get this on there. Now, we're going to torque this nut to 184 foot-pounds.

The easiest way to do that, of course, is to have the arm facing towards the right. That way there, when we tighten it, it's going to have leverage against the ground. Let's clean up the threads on our bolts. And then we'll go ahead and put on a teeny bit of thread locker. I've got the thread nice and cleaned up. I'm going to put in one of the bolts. I'm going to go for the top one. Get it right up in there. Looks good. Now, when I get my box up, I'm going to hold it, and I'm gonna try to get at least one of the bolts started before I grab the other two. Let's get our box up in here.

I'm twisting that bolt while I'm trying to wiggle this around. Okay. Start it in. I'm going to start in the other two and then we'll snug them up. Now, we're just going to use our 21-millimeter. We'll zip these down so they're bottomed out, and then we'll torque them to manufacturer specifications. Now, let's torque the bolts to 100 foot-pounds. Now, if you bent this out of the way, just make sure you bend it back. Let's get this off of here. Okay. I got the nut off. I'm going to leave this on here. It's going to help protect us. Now, we'll just pull down on the bar and slide it over that. There we are. Slides right on. Start it on there. Let's go ahead and snug this up now. Now, we're going to torque it to manufacturer specifications, which is 40 foot-pounds. That's torqued. The next thing we need to do is make sure that our castle nut winds up with the slot for the cotter pin. Once you have it lined up, go ahead and put it in, and lock it down. If it doesn't line up, you need to continue tightening until it does. All right. So, I've got that nice and lined up. I've got my cotter pin here, I'm gonna slide it right through. And then, of course, make sure that I peen it over so there's no way that the cotter pin can come out because this is what makes sure it's locked in so it can't come unsecured. Now it's going to be time to get the steering shaft onto the power steering box here. Just kind of line it up. You're going to notice that the steering box right here has a flat area. On the inside of the shaft, it's also going to have a flat area. Once you line that up, this should slide on fairly easily. If you need to give it a couple of loving bonks with a hammer, well, that's probably pretty probable as well.

All right. I don't want to go too far. I want to just take a peek inside that hole and it looks like I need to go a little bit further. Looks about right. I've got my steering shaft bolt here. As you can tell, I cleaned off the threads and I put on just a teeny bit of thread locker because it's a good idea. There it is. All right. That's snug. Now, we're going to torque it to manufacturer specifications, which is 22 foot-pounds. So, it's a good idea to replace your O-rings on here. I just put on some nice new ones. Once you've done that, you just use a teeny bit of the power steering fluid, make sure that you lubricate them, and then we're going to go ahead and install them into the vehicle here. Let's start this one in there. You might need to wiggle the line around a little bit. All right. That one's bottomed out. Now, we're going to make sure we snug it up with our crow's foot. And then once we've done that, we're going to do the same thing to the other line. Click. Once you have it nice and snug, you want to pay attention right down along here to make sure the line is resting directly against the box. If it is, stick your screwdriver in and just kind of move it away. You want to have a teeny bit of a gap, that way there, it's not directly rubbing and potentially causing a hole over time. We're going to get this line started into the box. Just give it a couple of nice turns. Make sure it flows in nice and easy. Now, we're going to use the wrench to try to tighten it up. If you feel like it's getting stuck or it's hanging up in any way, it might be cross-threaded. In which case, you'd want to back off, check those threads, and make sure they're good. Okay. That one went right in. That feels pretty good. I'm just going to check it with the crow's foot.

Make sure you don't have too much pressure on your lines or your hoses in any direction. There's no kinks or crimps. This looks really great. Make sure you put this cover back on here. It should slide right over, and then over that line. That should lock it in. Make sure it cannot move around. Now, we're going to use a nice funnel, and then we're going to go ahead and fill up the system and then we'll bleed it. Make sure you use your manufacturer-specified fluid. Now that we have this, so it's almost full to the top. Okay. So, now that we've got plenty of fluid in here, we're actually just going to make sure the front wheels are off the ground a little bit, and we're going to turn the wheel completely to one side and then very slowly all the way to the other side from point to point, maybe three to four times, and we're gonna come out here and we're gonna watch for some air bubbles. Once we notice that the air bubbles have dissipated, we're going to start up the engine. We'll let it run for a few seconds. We'll turn it off and we'll recheck the level. Make sure the level's good and there's no aeration, and then we'll continue on with the bleed. Let's go ahead and put the cover on just to make sure no contaminants get in. Now we're just going to clean up the area. Anywhere that you see power steering fluid, make sure it's nice and clean. So that way there, when we run it and if we happen to see any fluid anywhere, we can determine where the leak might possibly be.

So, now, we're just gonna check the level. Looks like it's right about at the add line, but it also is at the full cold line. So, it's important to pay attention to the fact that your engine's either cold or warm. If it's cold, you want to be at approximately the cold line. If it's warm, you want to be much higher up approximately at the hot line. This looks decent. So, I'm just going to go ahead and run it now for a little while and make sure all the air burps out of it. Turn the wheels side to side. Okay. So, this looks great. I'm looking at where all my lines are connected into everything, I want to make sure that there's no leaks. If there's any leaks, we need to make sure we fix them now. This looks wonderful. We're going to run it for a little while, let it get up to temperature, and then we're going to recheck the fluid while the vehicle is hot. Now that the vehicle's nice and hot, let's go ahead and pull this up and out of here. Just check that fluid level. As you can tell, this is still a little bit low. So, I'm going to add some more. While I've got it open, we're going to take a peek inside and just double-check to make sure there's no air bubbles. If there's air bubbles, you need to continue bleeding the system before you take it for a nice long road test. Okay. So, we've got that nice and topped off now. We'll close this up. Make sure everything's nice and connected. There's nothing hanging around. This looks great. Let's take it for a road test. All right. Let's get the plate up here. Let's go ahead and get our shield up here.

One of the first things we need to do is safely raise and support the vehicle, so the wheel is off the ground. Let's remove our 22-millimeter lug nuts. Remove your wheel.

Now that the wheel's off of here, we have a clear view of the sway bar link. What you're going to notice is, up along the top, it has a strange-looking nut. It's very thin. It's going to be hard to grab onto. I'm going to use a pair of locking pliers to try to grab onto it. Using my 15-millimeter socket, I'm going to come down from the bottom here. Now I'm going to use my 14-millimeter socket down along the bottom here, see if we can get this to come apart. Looks like it's starting to turn.

Okay. So, for us, the outer sheath on this broke free from the bolt itself that's supposed to be running through the center, so I'm just going to go ahead and spray this down with some penetrant, let that soak down and through there. Sometimes, what happens is, is this outer portion will actually freeze or get stuck onto the bolt. If that's the case, what you would either want to do is grab onto the outer portion with some locking pliers, and then try to spin out that bolt. If that doesn't work, you might have to just cut the bolt itself. There's the bolt. Let's get all this out of here. Awesome.

So, now, assuming you're doing the sway bar links as a pair, now is the best time to go ahead and start doing the other side as well. Okay. Once you have both sides out, you should be able to move the bar around a little bit at this point. We're going to grab our new sway bar links. We take off the nut, take off the washer and the bushing, the washer and the bushing, and then, of course, the sheath, washer and bushing again, and we're going to leave it just like this.

Now, as we come up, okay, coming up from under the control arm, we still have the bolt with the washer and the bushing. Now we're going to take our bushing with our washer, put that facing down and towards the control arm. Grab your spacer, put that on there. We're going to push this up a little bit further. Now you're going to go washer, facing up, bushing. Get it underneath that sway bar. Bring it up. Bushing again.

If you were to look at these bushings, you can tell that they have like a rounded area, and then they have this area right here with a little like a piton. The piton is going to be going either towards the control arm or towards the sway bar. Set that on there, this one right here, and then, of course, our locking nut. I like to use a little thread locker on these.

I'm just going to use my 14-millimeter wrench, and of course, my ratchet underneath, and I'm going to start snugging it up. As I snug it, I want to be watching these bushings. What I want to see is the bushing touching up against the bar, on both sides of course. And, of course, down by the control arm there, we want those bushings to be touching up against it as well. We don't necessarily want to continue tightening, though, until the point where they seem like they're getting squished down and even pancaking out. So, let's just snug them up so they're all touching at least, and then we'll continue on.

Okay. So, this looks great. As you can tell, all of my bushings are touching exactly where they need to be touching. And you're also going to notice that I didn't continue tightening until they flattened out, like I had said before. This looks pretty great, so I'm just going to take a quick measurement of it. It looks like it's approximately the width of my thumb, personally, so I'm going to make sure that I go approximately the same on the other side of the vehicle.

Okay. Now it's going to be time to get the wheel up on here. Slide it on. Now we'll get the lug nuts on here, we'll bottom them out, and then we'll torque them to manufacturer specifications. Let's torque these lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds. Torqued.

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 at 1AAuto. 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 consult 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 are going to remove and reinstall the radiator fans in this 2001 Ford Taurus. The fans didn't need repaired in this car. I'm just doing the video to show you how to take them out and put them in. The only tools you'll need are an 8mm socket and ratchet and a flat blade screwdriver. We're going to disconnect the battery here using an 8mm socket. You'll want to use a regular screwdriver. There is two tabs, you'll want to pull out on the tab, and pull up on this fuse box. This will just go up and out of the way a little bit. You'll see there is an 8mm bolt right here. You can see right down there is a plug for your radiator fan. All you're going to do is pry out lightly here and pull that plug off. You want to pull these pins. You can see here's one of the pins out. Pull these pins out of the fan shroud. Okay. We'll kind of speed through that process of unplugging the fan and removing the harnesses from the clips, and then finish out removing the 8mm bolt. Get this up out of the way. Pull this fan up. That just comes out of the bottom. Lift it out.

With this fan I've done the same thing. I already loosened this bolt. I've already unplugged it. I'm just going to take that bolt off. I'm going to pull it out. Then I'm going to slide over to where this other fan came from. It's going to be a fight with all the wiring. Slide it up and out. Slide this on over. It has two feet that have basically a cross pattern on it. If you look down in you can see right there, that cross right there, that's where one of the feets goes. Then that cross right down there is where the other one goes. You put the fans down in, and you kind of just work them back and forth a little bit. You find where they go down in, and then that 8mm bolt lines up. Then tighten up that bolt. Tighten up this 8mm bolt. Reconnect the wiring harnesses for the fan. Make sure everything's routed correctly. Put the fuse block back into place, reconnect the battery, and you should be all set. The second fan, slide it down in, just pull the wiring out the way kind of. The same thing on the feet. This goes down in here into place. Tighten up your 8mm bolt. This back into place now, and then the pins connect them. Put the harnesses back into their places. Connect the battery one more time. You should be all set.

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. Let's get this little plastic cover out of here. To get out the sway bar links, more than likely, you're gonna have to drop your sway bar. To do that, I would spray right inside this hole right here, try to spray the top area of that bolt, and then from the other side, spray this side as well. While you're at it, why don't you do the other side of the vehicle at the same time?
To get this one out, obviously, it's going to be a little bit difficult. You have minimal room here. Go and try to use some sort of pivoting extension or whatever you might have to get up in there. You could also use a 10-millimeter wrench if you have all day.

Let's do the same to the other side. I'm just gonna use a swivel socket to come through this hole. I want to try to find the bolt under there. I'm gonna hold that and then I'm gonna remove the nut on the top.

Okay, so that one broke. So now we're just gonna get the bar off of here. We can move this, try to get this separated real quick.
So now we have the sheath. This is a metal sheath that goes over this metal part of the bolt. Odds are that's gonna be completely rotted together. The best thing to do here would be to cut it. If you were to look right down along here, you can see exactly what I'm talking about. They left plenty of room for moisture to get in there. Let's carefully heat up the area. You obviously want to be careful for any rubber such as your axle boot, or even your ABS wire.

Now we have that nice and warm, let's go ahead and hit it was some penetrant spray. Let's clear the area, let that dissipate for a minute.

Let's get the rest of this off of there.
It doesn't look like the bushing wants to be coming out at the same time here. Get this out here, get that out of there.

Now when you're replacing the sway bar links or just the bushings, you want to obviously do those as a pair and when they're apart is the best time to do it. So now when we're getting ready to put this on, it's important to make sure you have the smaller bushing on the bottom side, that's going to make it much easier to get up through the hole in the bottom of the control arm.

Get that and the bushing right up in there. Now we're gonna go with the other bushing that has the washer on it like that. Slide it down, get your shank, slide that on there, you've got your other washer, a little thing on there. Slide that like that. This is gonna go through the bar. Now we'll grab our bushing with the washer, slide that right on there and get our locking nut, make sure you put that on as well, obviously.

Now we're gonna do the same to the other side and then we'll jump into putting back on the bushings. Now we're gonna take our 13-millimeter wrench, come through the bottom of that control arm right through the hole and try to hold the bolt. And we'll come up here with our socket and we're gonna snug this up and pay attention to the bushings for how much they try to squish down.

I'm just going to analyze these bushings real quick. What you want to look for is to make sure that they're actually touching up against the bar. They have no room for movement, and you also want to make sure that they're not necessarily squished down like a pancake. If you've done that, you're probably going to damage the bushing. All you want it to be is enough so it touches here, here, here, and then if you could see in there, of course it's touching as well. We'll do the same to the other side. Let's start all of our bolts in here that hold the sway bar bushings in.

We're gonna snug these right up. All right, make sure those are nice and tight and then do the same to the other side of the vehicle.

Time to get the wheel up on here. Start on one of those lug nuts. Now we're just gonna 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. It's torqued. We'll get our cover on here. Awesome. And now we'll just do the same thing to the other side.

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.

I'm going to use a 22-millimeter socket to take off the lug nuts so we can remove the wheel, then I remove the wheel. So I'm going to use some pliers at the top of the sway bar link right there, and then underneath, I'm gonna use a 14-millimeter socket and just take the link out. A long bolt goes straight through just like that. And take the top off just like that. Now just take a pry bar underneath here. Just raise up on the sway bar, take the link out, all right. So we'll just take the new link apart, and just leave the washer and the bushing on this long bolt. And take the other bushing and the washer, line that up first.

And then this tube goes next. Slide that bolt through, and then another washer and the bushing. Align this up and slide the bushing and the washer. Pry down on the bar. And then it would help if you had someone to help you out to pry this while you're holding this and getting the nuts started. All right, that's good. And then use a 14-millimeter wrench for the nut and a 14-millimeter socket and tighten this down. And then you want to torque this to 89 inch-pounds. Make sure you're on inch-pounds, not foot-pounds. Now, put the tire back and lug nuts. Now we're gonna torque the lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds in a star pattern or a cross pattern so that it tightens the wheel down evenly. And just go around again. Double Check.