1996 Chevrolet C2500 Truck 7200LB GVW Front 14 Piece Steering & Suspension Kit TRQ PSA63514

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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 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 or 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're going to install a new Pitman arm on this 1996 Tahoe. It is the same as any 1988 to 1998 Chevy truck. This is a four-wheel drive vehicle. So four wheel drive trucks and also 1992 to 1999 SUVs, four-wheel drives.

You will need the following tools: penetrating oil, a whole host of mm sockets, 18-mm fitting wrench, joint fork and hammer Pitman arm puller and actually not listed here was a 19-mm socket and ratchet or your tire iron to remove your tire. You'll also need a jack and jack stand or lift.

To check and see if you have a bad Pitman arm you can see where this front driver's side tire we're going up and under. Here's your transfer to here and then up right there is the joint of your Pitman arm. This here is your Pitman arm and then this is your steering linkage. Again, here is your Pitman arm. Here's your steering linkage. Now when you move your tires, I'm just grabbing hold of the tires and kind of turning them back and forth when the car is above the ground and you can see there is a lot of play and movement going on around that Pitman arm. That joint is bad.

First, you'll want to remove this skid plate which is four 15-mm bolts. You can see two easy here, and there's one up here and one you cannot really see, but over here. Now we're going to remove the steering box to get to the Pitman arm. Okay. So, this is the driver's side of the engine compartment. There's the power break booster and this right down here is your steering box. It's a little difficult to see. It's where you can see these tubes going in. There is a plastic shield here. It kind of clips around. Now you can see this was clipped up and around here. You just kind of peel that off and pull this plastic shield back and now you're going to want to use some penetrating oil and douse both your fittings, one here and then one a little further up. It's kind of difficult to see.

There are two fittings to douse with penetrating oil and then there's also a bolt. You might be able to barely see there and then you also want to loosen this bolt here and that loosens the coupler from the steering box shaft. The best tool for removing those power steering fittings is a fitting wrench like this, 18 mm. See it down on there? I got it on there and then once you loosen it with a fitting wrench you can usually get an open-end wrench on there to help you navigate it the rest of the way.

Then, make sure you have a catch pan underneath to catch the fluid as it starts leaking out. Now we're going to use an 11-mm socket and ratchet and extension to loosen that bolt. Down in there put the socket and ratchet on there. At this point it might be good to have someone help you just hold the steering wheel so it keeps that from turning at all. Once you remove the bolt then you want to take a large screwdriver or a pry bar and put it down in there and just make sure that you can move the steering shaft away from the steering box and if you watch you can see that the shaft is moving from the steering box pretty easily. When I actually unbolt the steering box I'll be able to pull it right out.

No from underneath here's the front of our transfer case on this four-wheel drive truck and this is our Pitman arm joint right here. So, it's a 21-mm bolt. I'll use an impact wrench. As you can see we removed the tire over here and this is a joint fork. So, we're going to bring it in from the side here and then use a good hammer. Basically we just removed the tire so we can get a good wrap on this fork. Okay. You see that fork just separates that joint. Now we get to the three bolts that hold your steering box on and I just used a little screwdriver kind of bend this fender up a little bit because it was in the way and you can just tap it back down with a hammer when you're done. Then you can easily get a socket and extension on there, and just to show you it can be done with hand tools, again, 21-mm. I'll just do the rest of it with an impact wrench just to be quicker.

Hold on to the box with one hand. If not it's just going to fall out. Move it up and out of the steering gear and pull it forward from the shaft. Here's the bottom of it. Put the steering box here, upside down, once again just so any more fluids just drain out into the pan. Here's where having an impact wrench is going to be really valuable. Then this socket is a 34 mm. If you don't have an impact you can just turn it on all the way and then use a large bar. You may want someone to help hold it. You could bolt your steering box onto a longer piece of wood which would help you to keep it steady, but having an impact wrench is the best way. Now, you're going to want to use your Pitman arm puller. This is really the only way to do this.

Believe it or not I actually forgot to film, or I 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 to the idler arm. It's the same idea. You would just be doing it on the steering box. Put the tool on like that and then put your wrench on there and then pull and it breaks it right free. Okay, and this ends part one of this video. If you want to see, obviously, reinstalling the Pitman arm go please to
part two.

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. 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. Thank you.

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.

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.

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