Replaces
This part doesn’t fit a . Select from parts that fit.
Specify your vehicle's year, make and model to guarantee fit.
Part Details
Product Features
TRQ drivetrain kits are manufactured using premium raw materials to restore original performance. Each TRQ drivetrain component is designed to be a direct, maintenance-free replacement to the stock unit. To extend the service life of your drivetrain, TRQ recommends replacing wheel hubs, bearings, and constant velocity (CV) drive axles at the same time to ensure even wear of components and improved ride comfort. All products are fit and road-tested in our Massachusetts R&D facility to ensure we deliver on our promise of Trusted Reliable Quality.
Our direct fit gas-charged shock absorbers help restore your vehicle's handling and ride quality to just like new.
Install Tip: When replacing steering components, have a professional alignment performed afterwards. This ensures proper tracking and even tire wear.
Our steering and suspension components are pre-greased and sealed for long life and do not require the extra maintenance typically required by greaseable versions.
Item Condition:
New
Attention California Customers:
WARNING: This product can expose you to chemicals including Chromium (Hexavalent Compounds), which is known to the State of California to cause cancer, and birth defects or other reproductive harm. For more information, go to www.P65Warnings.ca.gov
Lifetime Warranty
This item is backed by our limited lifetime warranty. In the event that this item should fail due to manufacturing defects during intended use, we will replace the part free of charge. This warranty covers the cost of the part only.
Created on:
Tools used
I'm gonna use a 22-millimeter socket. Take off the lug nuts so we can remove the wheel. Now remove the wheel. Now, take the axle nut off. Use a 36-millimeter socket. You can take the washer off as well. Use some pliers at the top of the sway bar link right there. And underneath, I'm gonna use a 14-millimeter socket, and just take the link out. It's 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.
Now, we can take these bolts out. Use a 15-millimeter socket. All right. Now, you can take the axle and just pry it out a little bit. If you need to, you can use a pry bar or a screwdriver in between there. And just slide it down just like that. Now, I'm gonna push the axle out here. If you have to, you can use a hammer on that, and just slide it out. Slide the axle back in same way it came out. And slide this in position over here. I'll get all the bolts started. Now, I'm gonna torque these bolts to 58-foot-pounds. I'm gonna start on this one. And then, I'm gonna switch to the complete opposite side just to torque them down evenly. And you can use a pry bar to hold the studs from spinning. And torque the complete opposite one. And then, once you torque those, then just go around and torque the rest of them. So 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. Line 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 nut 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. And put the washer back on. Put the nut back on. Now, I'm gonna torque the nut to 177-foot-pounds. I'm gonna use a prey bar to prevent the hub from spinning. There you go. Now put the tire back on, and the lug nuts. Now, I'm 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.
Tools used
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.
Tools used
Now one of the first things you're gonna wanna do before you start any job is to make sure you're safe as possible. You want to have safety glasses and hand protection at all times. The next thing you're gonna wanna do is safely raise and support your vehicle so that your wheels are off the ground. Next, if there's a center cap, remove the plastic center cap and that will expose your lug nuts. Remove all 6 using a 22-millimeter socket. Remove your wheel.
What we need to do now... Oops... What we need to do now is remove the bolts that hold the axle, so the axle comes out of the front differential. I like to use a nice long extension and a swivel. We'll remove all those bolts. Now what we need to do is get this cover off of here. You can use something as simple as a pry bar and a hammer. Just give it a couple of loving bonks. Check your cover, make sure that there's no puncture holes. Let's take off this axle nut. Get that washer out of there as well.
Put a little bit of penetrant in here. Then we're going to take our punch and our hammer and we'll give this a couple of bonks to push the axle through. Okay, that broke free. Let's move along. Let's see if we can make the axle come down. It should go below there. Pull the axle out. There it is, friends. Let's go ahead and clean down this area. Now we're just gonna clean and prep our bolts. Once they're clean, just use a little bit of thread locker on them. We're gonna grab the axle and we'll start putting it back in.
I'm just gonna use some copper never-seize, go right inside that bearing hole there. Grab that axle. Squeeze the little one through. Okay. Pull the axle up to where it needs to go, line it up, and start in your bolts. Now that we have all those started, let's go ahead and snug them up. Do it in a crisscross pattern. So now it's gonna be time to go ahead and torque those bolts. To do that, it's probably easiest if you get down close to the ground, put a bar going through your lug studs like this, and then make it so your wheel can't spin. Go ahead and torque these to 58 foot-pounds.
Every time you get the axle nut on there, you're gonna notice that it's a locking nut because it has the two squished areas. If you still wanna use a little thread locker, we'll call it your prerogative. Now let's torque this to 155 foot-pounds. Torqued. Let's clean out this area. Now we're gonna take our cap and a little bit of gasket maker. Just go right along the edge there and just make a nice seal so no moisture can get in. Start it on there.
Clean up your mess. Now let's get the wheel back up on here. Okay, now with the wheel barely on the ground, so it can't spin, we're gonna torque the lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds. Torqued. If you have a center cover, put it on there now. Now that you've finished your service, go ahead and take it for a road test and make sure you get it down to a local reputable alignment shop.
Tools used
Tools used
Before you start, you wanna be aware that after you're done this job, you're gonna wanna go to an alignment specialist so that you can have the vehicle aligned so you don't wear out the tires prematurely.
I'm gonna remove the wheel. Use a 22-millimeter socket, take the lug nuts off. And take the wheel off.
I'm gonna loosen up the jam nut. You can use a 22-millimeter wrench or a 7/8 wrench. Just get that loose. That's good. I'm just gonna spray a little rust penetrant on here. Gonna use an 18-millimeter socket, take this nut off. And if the nut doesn't come off and the stud starts spinning, you can use an 8-millimeter socket to hold that stud from spinning and then just use the wrench to take the nut off. Now you can take a hammer and just give a tap on the bottom of the tir rod or take a pickle fork and separate it this way. Just if you use a pickle fork, it's probably gonna rip the boot right here. So I'm just gonna give it a hit right here. There we go. And now we're gonna take the outer tie rod off. As we unscrew this, just count the threads. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 23, 24. So write that number down and when you go to put it back together, you're gonna count them to put the other one in the same position that that one was in.
And take the new tie rod end. Get this started. Make sure you count. One, 2, 3, 4, 5, 22, 23, 24. And line this up in the knuckle. Take the castle nut. Get that started. Now what you can do is to prevent the stud from spinning, you can take a prybar. Just pry in between the knuckle and pry down on the tie rod. Use an 18-millimeter socket and tighten this up. And tighten this to 37 foot-pounds. And then just check to see where the stud...where the hole is for the castle nut and if you need to, you can snug it up a little bit more to get it to line up. And that hole lines up. Now take the cotter pin, slide it through. Should slide through this way. And take some side cutters and just bend it. Just tap it out of the way. And then trim off the excess. And we'll snug up the jam nut. And tighten that to 50 foot-pounds.
Put the wheel back on. And the lug nuts. Now we're gonna tighten these lug nuts down to 140 foot-pounds and I'm gonna do it in a cross pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again, double-check.
Tools used
You wanna keep in mind when you're doing this job, after you're done, you're gonna wanna go to a local garage and have the vehicle aligned so you don't have premature tire wear.
Take this center cap off. We'll just use a straight blade screwdriver. Just get behind here, slide it off. Get the lug nuts off. Use a 22-millimeter socket. Now take the wheel off.
Loosen up this jam nut. I'm gonna use a 7/8 wrench. And just take some rust penetrant, this thing's a little bit rusty. So let that soak a little bit. Now take a 18-millimeter socket. Take this nut off. And take a hammer and just hit the bottom of the tie rod to release it from the knuckle. Just like that. Now I'm gonna take off the tie rod. Just count how many turns you have. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 21, 22. And write that number down. And take the outer tie rod, one, two. And then count the turns that you counted before, 3, 21, 22. Take the jam nut off. I mean, the castle nut off. And slide it in the knuckle. Slide the stud part into the knuckle. Put the nut on. Just gonna use a pry bar. Pry down on the outer tie rod end to prevent the stud from spinning. And just snug this up a little bit. It's the 18-millimeter socket. And torque this to 37-foot-pounds. And if the hole doesn't line up for the cotter pin, just tighten the castle nut until it lines up. Little more. Should be good. Put the cotter pin through. And take my cutters and just bend this over. And just trim the excess. Tighten up this jam nut. I'm gonna use a 13/16 wrench. And if you have the ability to torque it, torque it to 36-foot-pounds.
Put the wheel on. And the lug nuts. And now I'm gonna torque these lug nuts in a star pattern or cross pattern to 140-foot-pounds to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again. Double-check. And put the center cap on.
Tools used
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.
Tools used
Now one of the first things you're gonna wanna do before you start any job is to make sure you're safe as possible. You wanna have safety glasses and hand protection at all times. The next thing you're gonna wanna do is safely raise and support your vehicle so that your wheels are off the ground. Next, if there's a center cap, remove the plastic center cap and that will expose your lug nuts. Remove all 6 using a 22-millimeter socket. Remove your wheel. Now that we have a nice clear view of our tire rods, I'm gonna spray down this area right here. This is the adjustment area. Use a little bit of penetrant. That's gonna help you along. Using some nice long pliers, I'm gonna grab right onto this and I'm gonna turn it clockwise. That'll break free this jam nut. Okay, that broke free. Let's remove the nut that holds the outer tie rod end to the knuckle.
Now we're gonna hit right here on the knuckle to break our outer tie rod end free from the knuckle. Turn your outer tie rod end counterclockwise and count the amount of times it turns around as you remove it. One, two, three and so on. Okay. Write down that corresponding number so you can remember. We have our outer tie rod end. Let's go ahead and put that on. And we're gonna count it in the same amount of threads that we counted the original one off. That was one, two, three and so on. Okay. Just bring this so it's close. Get that nut off of there. I'm gonna put this on there. Let's bottom that out. Now we're gonna torque this nut to 48 foot-pounds. All right. So now that we have that torqued, we need to pay special attention to where the slot on the castle nut lines up with the hole in the stud. If it doesn't line up, you need to continue tightening until it does. Okay, so that looks pretty good. Let's try it.
That slides right through. Spin it over. The cotter pin's gonna ensure that there's no way that this nut can come loose. Now it's gonna be time to tighten up your jam nut. To tighten this we're gonna turn it counter clockwise. When you torque it, you would wanna torque it to 37 foot-pounds if you have the ability. Let's see here. Okay. Just make sure that it's nice and snug. By the time you're finished, make sure your outer tie rod end is nice and parallel to the ground or at least as parallel as it can be. Now let's get the wheel back up on here. Okay. Now with the wheel barely on the ground so it can't spin, we're gonna torque the lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds. Torqued. If you have a center cover, put it on there now. Now that you've finished your service, go ahead and take it for a road test and make sure you get it down to a local reputable alignment shop.
Tools used
You want to keep in mind when you're doing this job, after you're done, you're gonna want to go to a local garage and have the vehicle aligned so you don't have premature tire wear.
Just take this cover off. Use a 15-millimeter socket. There's two bolts in the bottom, two on top. Sometimes there'll be a third. Slide it off. Take this cotter pin out. Just use some side cutters and pull that up. Just gonna use a little rust penetrant. It's a little rusty. Take a 21-millimeter socket. Take this nut off.
Now, I want to separate the idler arm from the steering bar. I'm just gonna use a front-end tool. There's many different tools you could use to get this off. Just tighten this up. Put the nut on just so my tool doesn't slip off the stud. It's just gonna use it as a guide.
Another way you can try to do this is use a pickle fork. There we go. Slide that up. I'm going to take these two bolts out. I'm going to use a wrench, a 21-millimeter wrench backside to hold the nut. Use a 21-millimeter socket on the bolt. Take both of those out. Pull the bolts out. Let me just grab the whole idler arm assembly and you just slide it off.
If you're gonna replace just the arm or just the assembly, you're gonna have to separate it. So use a 24-millimeter socket. It helps to put it in a vise and then you can use a puller and separate these two just like that. And take the arm, put the new nut on. Just snug that up tight. All right, just line this up.
I'm gonna have to tap this in place. That's good. Before you put the bolts through up top, just make sure it's going through this bar right here. Put the bolts in, take the two nuts. Get them on the back side. Now, snug these up. Torque to 74 foot-pounds. And take the castle nut, install that there, tighten it up and torque this to 46 foot-pounds.
If the hole didn't line up, you can just tighten it up a little bit more so you can put the cotter pin in. Slide the cotter pin in, and just bend one of the tabs over and trim the excess. Take this shield, install it bolts, put the back in, and tighten these up.
Tools used
Tools used
I'm going to use a 22-millimeter socket. Take off the lug nuts, so we can remove the wheel. Now, remove the wheel. Now, I'm going to support the lower control arm with a jack stand. You could also use a floor jack just to take the tension off the suspension. That's good. The top of the shock is pretty rusty, so I'm just going to use some rust penetrant. Let it soak for a little bit. I'll take a 15-millimeter wrench. Slide it over the nut. Just try to break it free first. There we go.
At some point, as you're loosening this nut, the whole shaft of the shock is going to spin, so I'm going to use some large pliers, and just hold it from spinning right here. You could also get some locking pliers, and attach it to the top of the shaft, and just keep loosening the nut. All right. And take that nut off, and slide the top off. Now, I'll use a 21-millimeter socket and a 21-millimeter wrench on the backside of the bolt at the lower shock, and take the nut off. And slide the bolt out. Just support the shock, so it doesn't fall. Slide it up, and you should be able to slide it up. And take this nut off, and take the top washer and bushing off, and slide the shock through. Get it lined up, up top, and get it in position down here, and then slide the bolts on.
Take the nut. Put them on. We're just going to keep this lower bolt loose, and we'll put the top together first because it'll make it easier to install, and then we'll tighten this up afterwards. Now, take this bushing and the washer, and put it over the shaft of the shock. Take the nut, put the nut on. Then you can take a 14-millimeter wrench, or a ratchet wrench, tighten that up, and if the stud starts to spin, or the shaft starts to spin, you can use a six millimeter wrench to hold it as you tighten this up. You can take a torque wrench, and tighten this down to 15 foot-pounds. That's good.
Tighten this up. Now, we'll torque this nut to 59 foot-pounds. Now, we can raise the vehicle. Now, put the tire back on, and the lug nuts. I'm going to 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.
Tools used
Just take the center cap off. Use a straight blade screwdriver. Get behind here. This is 22-millimeter socket. Take the lug nuts off. Take the wheel off.
I'm gonna take these two caliper bolts out. I'm gonna use a T55 socket. I'm just gonna tap them in because this is pretty rusty. There we go. Cracked it free. Now use the gun. That one came right out. Slide those out. Take a straight blade screwdriver, just pry out on the caliper a little bit, compress the piston. Slide the caliper off. We need to flip it over. It's a good idea to attach it somehow so it doesn't fall. But if you can get it to sit right there, that's good. And just take the old brake pads off. Use an 18-millimeter socket. Take these two caliper bracket bolts off. These are normally on there pretty tight. There we go. All right, those are broken free. Take those out. Grab the bracket, slide it right off. Grab the rotor, slide it off. If it doesn't come off that easy, take a hammer and just hit in these areas. Just try not to hit the studs. Now I'm gonna use a 36-millimeter socket. Take this nut off. Take this washer off as well. This is pretty rusty. I'm just gonna spray a little rust penetrant in there. Let that soak. I'm just gonna use a punch and give it a couple taps, just to make sure this is loose. You don't wanna push it too far, just make sure the axle's separated from the hub a little bit.
Then spray the backside a little bit with some more penetrating oil. Let that soak. Disconnect the connector up top, this little tab. Just slide that. And then the other connector is gonna go down to the hub. Disconnect these. Use a trim tool. Pry up. Pop that out. You need to pop these off, like this. Or if you have trouble with it, you can just pop the retainer open and just slide these out. Sometimes these break right there, and it's just easier to open those up. Slide the wire over here. Use some needle-nose pliers, just squeeze this clip. And slide that out, outta the way.
Now I'm just gonna take these three bolts off on the backside of the knuckle. These go to the hub. I'm gonna use a 15-millimeter socket. Take those out. Just be careful near the CV boot, you don't wanna rip it. There we go. Got them all at least loosened. And take this bolt out. And this top one I can't get that out. I'm just gonna leave that in there. When the hub comes forward, then that bolt will be loose.
Now I'm gonna take a hammer and hit the hub from the backside to try to separate it from the knuckle. Sometimes these are frozen on there pretty good. And it's actually starting to move. You can grab the backing shield and just see if you can wiggle it. Spray a little bit more rust penetrant in there. The axle, a little tap. And just slide it out. And that bolt is just loose. I'm just gonna leave that right there for when I go to reinstall it. Just gonna clean up this knuckle. Just use a wire brush. Clean up some of this rust. Take this backing shield off. Gonna reuse this. If this is rusty, you can clean this up with a wire brush a little bit. I'm gonna use some anti-seize on this area so that if I ever have to take this off again, it comes off easy. Just put a little on the splines too. Slide the wire through the backing shield and install the new hub. Get it lined up. That's good. Get the bolt started. Gonna start with that top bolt. It's kinda hard to get to.
All right, with that bolt started, go ahead and take the wire. We can rerun the wire. And I can either pop that one out or just pop the new one off and reuse the old one. Screwdriver, pop that off. Lock it in place. Put that there. And we'll plug this in right there. And then reposition this, and that's good. And you get the other bolts in. And tighten these bolts up. Move this a little more. All right. Now we're gonna go back to all these bolts and torque them to 133 foot-pounds. And do the same on the other two. Put the washer on. Put the nut on. It is a good idea to replace the nut. But you can reuse it if you have to. And tighten this up. I'm just gonna put the pry bar through here, and then the other end is on the ground. That's gonna prevent the hub from spinning. And I'll torque this nut to 177 foot-pounds. That's good. Now we're gonna clean up this bracket. Just take a straight blade pocket screwdriver. Take these clips off. And there's a lot of rust underneath here. Take a wire brush, clean this up. If you have to, you can use a file. Just be careful, you don't wanna take too much material off. And then take some brake caliper lubricant and just wipe that down. Brake caliper grease there and right there. And take the new caliper slides or anti-rattle clips. Put those on there. Line it up, find the right one. Put it on there. Put a little more brake caliper grease on here, just a thin coat. Just where the pads are gonna make contact. Take a little bit of anti-seize, just go around the hub. We'll see around the center here and spread it out. Nice thin coat. Just gonna take the rotor, put it on backwards. I'm just gonna clean the surface. Use a little brake parts cleaner. And we'll wipe it with a rag with just that protective coating on there to prevent it from rusting. And flip it over, do the same on this side. And wipe it down.
Now take the old caliper bolts. I'll just put a little thread-locking compound on there. And line the caliper bracket up, goes this way. And put the bolts in. Get those lined up. And use the torque wrench, and torque these to 129 foot-pounds. Good. Now install the new brake pads. Now the warning indicator on the inside is gonna go at the bottom and just one, not one at the top. Just slide that in position. And the outside one will have both. That's good. Now I'm gonna compress the caliper. Use the caliper compressing tool. If you have to, use the old brake pad to help you. And just go slow. You don't wanna push these in too fast. This is gonna push the brake fluid through the hoses, through the lines, back up into the master cylinder. All right, those are compressed. Take the tool out. Just make sure the seals look good, the dust seals. Those look good. Now put the caliper back over the pads and line it into the bracket. Take the brake caliper pins, just use a little brake parts cleaner on them. Wipe them off. Take some brake caliper grease. Grease them up. And slide the pins back in position. Get them started. And then tighten them down. Now I'm gonna torque these bolts to these caliper guide pins to 80 foot-pounds. There we go.
And put the wheel back up. Put the lug nuts on. Now I'm gonna torque these lug nuts to 140-foot-pounds in a star pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again, double-check. Install the center cap. Now just pump the brake pedal. There's gonna be an air gap between the caliper piston and the brake pads. Pump that up. Just go slow. And once it feels good, then you're all set. And double-check your brake fluid level in the brake reservoir. Max line's right there. If you give it a little shake, our fluid's right about there.
Tools used
All right. So, one of the first things you need to do is safely raise and support the vehicle. Once you've done that, you're going to remove all six of your lug nuts. Remove your wheel. Now, the next thing that we would want to do is take a look at our caliper right here. Look all around it to make sure you don't see any moisture coming out. If you see moisture coming out of it, more than likely, it's got a fluid leak. Assuming it looks like it's in good condition, we're going to go ahead and push back the piston a little bit. Grab your small pry bar, come right in between the caliper and up against the pad if you can or even the rotor, and then we're just going to carefully, slowly push this back. So, now the next thing that I would want to do is come right on the backside and I would remove the bolts that are holding the whole caliper bracket to the knuckle itself. There's going to be two of them and they're going to hold on this whole unit. Me, personally, what I like to do is inspect everything as I go. I don't want to just take this off and potentially have bad brakes. So, I'll actually take the caliper apart. I'm going to take off the two bolts that hold the caliper to the bracket and inspect those pads so I know I have good parts.
Once your caliper's off, take a good look. Make sure you don't see any moisture coming around these boots right here. If you see any moisture, you have a brake leak. You need to replace your caliper. Now, we can grab onto those pads. We'll take them right off of here and just take a nice look. This one has plenty of meat all the way around. It's not damaged in any way. If anything, it could use a little bit of parts cleaner, but that's about as much as I would go. Let's take a look at this one. That looks perfect as well. If they were worn at an angle or anything like that, that would be an issue that you'd need to diagnose. Let's get this bracket off of here. Let's remove the rotor. The next thing we need to do is get this cap off of here. I'm just going to use this pry bar. Next, we're going to remove our 36-millimeter axle nut. Get that washer off of there. Remove your 18-millimeter outer tie rod end nut. The next thing we need to do is hit right along here on the knuckle to break the outer tie rod end free. You can also notice that your outer tie rod end threads don't come all the way down to this point. So, if you wanted to, you can just give a couple of light bonks in an upward direction here. If that doesn't work, go ahead and make your way up here.
So, now if you follow this cable coming up along your upper control arm past your frame, and if you could see up behind here, see if I can bend that, you can see right where the connection is going to go in. Okay? That's got a little push clip that's going down into this bracket there. So, we're going to just go ahead and take that out. I have a little forky tool. Now, I'll bring it to where you can see. This was the push clip that was going down into this metal piece here. Separate the two. I always like to take a peek, make sure there's no funny colors in my connector. Make sure nothing's broken or torn. Set that aside. At this point, you can go ahead in between here. You can use something as simple as a pocket screwdriver or your finger even maybe, and you can start popping off these clips. This one right here is a little bit different. It's got two little ears that you're going to need to squish in. You can either do one at a time and just kind of try to work it at an angle or you can try to squeeze both with some pliers. There it is. The next thing we need to do is break our axle free from the wheel bearing. Go ahead and break that free with some penetrant and then use a punch right in the center there and a hammer. If you can see the axle moving, then you're doing all right. Now, the next thing we need to do is come from the backside of the knuckle, approximately where the axle is going to be. If I was to press in and out on the axle, you can see where the bolt's going to be.
For this one up here, obviously, I'm not going to be able to use my socket and ratchet. I'm going to have the upper ball joint in the way. Just use my wrench, carefully get it on there. There we are. And then we'll just wrench it right off of there. Go ahead and spray the area with some penetrant. The next thing we're going to do is remove the bearing from the knuckle itself. Before I get to hitting on it, I'm going to go ahead and put on this axle nut there. That's going to prevent the bearing from potentially falling off and hurting me. And then I'm just going to take my hammer and I'm going to give it a couple of loving bonks to try to pull it away from the knuckle. So, I have a nice clear gap here. I'm just going to keep on working at it. All right. That looks good. Remove the nut off of here, remove our bearing, and remove it from the backing plate. Now, the next thing we need to do is clean up the area where the new bearing is going to ride. If you were to look right along this area here, all in this circle is going to be up against the bearing. So, let's go ahead and clean that up as much as possible and then right along this edge right here as well. Pretty much the flat areas facing out towards us, the bearing is going to be pressed right up against it.
So, we've got the inside pretty cleaned up as much as we could. We cleaned up the outer portion here where the bearing is going to mount up against. Now, just check that splined area. Make sure there's no crud inside there. If you need to clean it down, go ahead and clean it down using some parts spray. Now, I'm going to push through all those bolts. Just take a peek at them and make sure they're still in good condition. If there's any thread locker, just try to clean it off of there. I'm going to go ahead and use a little bit of thread locker. I like to use thread locker on these for sure. Perfect. I'm gonna put a little bit right here too. Let's take a quick look at that backing plate. Make sure it's in good condition, it's not damaged in any way, it's not bent. Grab our new bearing, go ahead and put the wire right straight through there, and then line up the area where the wire is supposed to go through. Just like that. Now, we're going to take that and we're going to put the wire facing towards the top front of the vehicle. And just go ahead and twist it until it fits in on the axle and slide it right in. Okay.
All the bolts are bottomed out. Let's go ahead and torque them to 133 foot-pounds. That's torqued. Let's get our ABS cable back on here. Push the small side because if you were to look you'd see a larger side, put the smaller side right through here. Make sure it clicks in. Make sure it's secure. This is going to go across the top of your control arm. And then make its way over to here. This clip should sit right inside this groove. This groove right here is for that clip. Okay. We'll connect these in, give them a nice tug, make sure it's secure. Put your push clip through the hole. The next thing we're gonna do is get this outer tie rod end back on here. Torque this to 48 foot-pounds. Okay. Let's get our washer on there and our axle nut. The next thing we need to do is hold this so it can't spin. I'm just going to use a nice long pry bar, put it across the studs, and then we're going to torque our axle nut to 177 foot-pounds. Now, it's going to be time to get our cap back on. We want to make sure we cover this back up. Just take a peek at it and make sure it's in decent condition. If you don't see any holes in it, I would use some of this gasket maker. I'm going to come right along the area that's going to seal up against that bearing. This is going to keep the moisture out of there. That looks pretty great. Let's go ahead and get it on there. There it is. Neaten it up a little bit. Awesome.
The next thing that you would want to do is make sure you clean up the area on your rotor that's going to mate up against your wheel bearing. So, if you were to look at the backside, all right along here that's going to mate against the bearing needs to be clean. Let's use some copper never-seize right here on the hub. Let's get the rotor back up on here. Now, we're going to use one lug nut, screw it all the way on so it holds the rotor from moving around. The next thing we're going to need to do is push back the brake caliper. To do that, you can either open up this bleeder screw right here, and you take a risk, of course, breaking it either going in or out. Or you can just go ahead and turn the caliper around. I like to use a pad, and then you would just use something to squish this down and force those pistons back down and in. This is a tool that works great for the job. Just put it in here. As I crank, it's going to spread and it's going to push back those pistons. I'm going to do this nice and slow. You'll notice this is pushing in both pistons at the same time. If you tried to push in one piston at a time, more than likely the other piston is going to want to come out.
So, now we just need to take a peek along here and just double-check those boots. Make sure that they're not swollen, or pushed out, or ripped, or torn in any way, and there's definitely no leakage. These look great. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to continue on by using a little bit of caliper grease and I'm going to go right along the mating surfaces where the caliper is going to touch directly against the brake pad. The next things that we need to do is clean up our slider bolts here and, of course, get all the thread locker off of our mounting bolts. Now that I have these cleaned up, let's continue on by installing the caliper. Let's grab our bracket and our two bolts. I like to use a little bit of thread locker on them, but we'll call it your prerogative. Go ahead and slide that in, start in those bolts, we'll snug them up, and then we're going to torque them to 139 foot-pounds. You're gonna notice that one of your pads has two of these brake wear indicators and then the other one's going to have one. The pad that has two, goes on the inside. Put the outer pad on there. Let's grab the caliper, slide it right down over here. Be careful for these boots. You want to make sure that they're lined up with the hole so the slider can go through. Perfect.
At this point, we're going to add some lubricant to the sliders. When we're going to add it, we're going to put it along here all the way up to there, but you don't need to get it up onto the threaded area. Let's go ahead and put those in there. Bottom these out. Torque them to 80 foot-pounds. The next thing that I would want to do is pump up the brake and make sure everything's functioning properly. You also pump up the brake for safety so that way there, when you get inside the vehicle after you're done with this job, you will have a brake pedal. Now that we've pumped up the brake, I just want to check that brake fluid real quick. Now, let's go ahead and get this off of here and we'll get the wheel on. Now, let's go ahead and torque our lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds. Center cap, go ahead and pop it on there.
Tools used
Tools used
You wanna keep in mind when you're doing this job, after you're done, you're gonna wanna go to a local garage and have the vehicle aligned so you don't have premature tire wear.
Just take this cover off. Use a 15-millimeter socket. There's two bolts on the bottom, two on top, sometimes there'll be a third. Slide it off. Take this cotter pin out. Just use some side cutters. And pull that out. Just gonna use a little rust penetrant, it's a little rusty. Take a 21-millimeter socket, take this nut off. Now I wanna separate the idler arm from the steering bar. I'm just gonna use a front-end [SP] tool. There's many different tools you could use to get this off. Just tighten this up. Put the nut on just so my tool doesn't slip off the stud. Just gonna use it as a guide. Another way you could try do this is use the pickle fork. There we go. Slide that out.
Gonna take these two bolts out. I'm gonna use a wrench, a 21-millimeter wrench backside to hold the nut. Use a 21-millimeter socket on the bolt. Take both of those out. Pull the bolts out. Just grab the whole idler arm assembly and just slide it out.
If you're gonna replace just the arm or just the assembly, you're gonna have to separate it. So use a 24-millimeter socket. It helps to put it in a vise. And then you can use a puller and separate these two. Just like that. And take the arm, put the new nut on. Just snug that up tight.
All right, just line this up. Gonna have to tap this in place. It's good.
Before you put the bolts through up top, just make sure it's going through this bar right here. We'll put the bolts in. Take the two nuts, get them on the backside. Now snug these up. Torque these bolts to 74-foot-pounds. And take the castle nut, install that there. Tighten it up. Then torque this to 46-foot-pounds. If the hole didn't line up you can just tighten it up a little bit more so you can put the cotter pin in. Slide the cotter pin in. And just bend one of the tabs over. And trim the excess. Take the shield, install it. Put the bolts back in. And tighten these up.
Tools used
All right, friends, so one of the first things we need to do is safely raise and support the vehicle. Once you've done that, you want to come right up front to this skid plate right here. Go ahead and remove all 15-millimeter bolts that hold it in. Now that that's out of the way, let's come right over here to where the idler arm comes down through this arm right here. Remove the 21-millimeter nut.
Now, the next thing we would need to do to get this arm out of here is, of course, try to drop this sway bar out of the way. If your bolts look like ours do, and you think that they're going to be an issue, I would just skip right past that, and we'll come right up here, and we'll remove the whole idler unit right here. To get this out of here, we're going to use a 21-millimeter right there, and then we'll use a 21-millimeter wrench on the nut side.
Right there. Let's put a nice piece of wood in between the frame and this bar right here just to make it so this bar can't go up too far while we hammer on this right there. Now that that's out of there, we can grab right onto this, and we'll get it out of the vehicle. Now, when you're replacing the idler arm here, you're going to need to separate it from the idler arm bracket assembly. When you go to do that, you're going to remove this nut right here, and then you're going to have to try to get something in between to try to separate.
You could try to use a puller, and that would probably be helpful if you have that tool. If you don't have the tool, and you try using a pickle fork, you're probably going to damage this right here, in which case, you would replace the pair, which is what we're going to do today. But I'll still show you how to get it apart anyways just in case you're doing only one piece.
Now, to remove this, I like to have it nice and level on the ground, and I'll put my foot on it. I'm going to have it so it's facing down towards the left, so when I remove this and it tries to spin, it can't go anywhere. Now, that we have the nut off of there, we need to separate the idler arm from the bracket assembly itself. We want to do that without damaging the bracket assembly because we're going to be reusing it, right?
So if you were to look right up here, you're going to see that there's a hole right inside the center of this. What I would like to do is take a punch. I'm going to put this on something sturdy. You can use something like a piece of wood like I have now, a desk, a vise, anything you want. Just be super careful. Come right in here with your punch and a hammer. Let's see if we can get this to come out.
Okay. So that came out, and we caused no damage to this. Perfect. The next thing I like to do is put the unit right inside of a vise if you have access to one. You want to grab on to this boot. Take a look underneath there. Make sure there's plenty of grease. Go ahead and push it down. That feels great. Now, we're going to take that idler arm. Set it right down on there. Take our brand-new nut. You always want to use a brand-new nut.
Okay. So now if I use my 24-millimeter wrench, and I try to tighten this, what you're probably going to notice is the stud on the inside is going to start spinning once it gets to a certain point. Okay. So as you can see, it's spinning the stud. Is the nut all the way down? No, it's not. So now we're going to use a hex bit, and you want to use an 8-millimeter. Come right inside there. That's going to hold it, and now we'll continue tightening this.
Make sure it's nice and tight. That feels great. Maybe time to get our unit back up inside the vehicle here. Just bring it right up and in behind those lines hopefully. Okay, get that in the center link. Let's get this into its bracket. Okay, that looks decent. Let's grab our two bolts. Make sure that they have washers. Put that right through. The other one. There we are. Let's grab the washers and the nuts for the other side. Now, let's snug these up. Now, let's go ahead and torque these down to 73 foot-pounds.
Torqued. Let's get this nut on there. Snug it up. Torque this to 46 foot-pounds. Torqued. And use our locking cotter pin. Slide it right on through there, and then make sure you pin it over so there's no way this nut can come loose. This out of here. Awesome. Let's get this shield back up on here. I'm going to line up those holes. Start in all the bolts before I tighten any of them down. Perfect. The next thing that I would want to do is make sure that I get it down to a reputable alignment shop.
Tools used
Now one of the first things you're going to want to do before you start any job is to make sure you're safe as possible. You want to have safety glasses and hand protection at all times. The next thing you're going to want to do is safely raise and support your vehicle so that your wheel is off the ground. Next, if there's a center cap, remove the plastic center cap and that'll expose your lug nuts. Remove all six using a 22-millimeter socket. Remove your wheel.
Now that we have a nice clear view of our tie rods, I'm going to spray down this area right here. This is the adjustment area. Use a little bit of penetrant. That's going to help you along. Using some nice long pliers, I'm going to grab right onto this and I'm going to turn it clockwise. That'll break free this jam nut. Okay, that broke free. Let's remove the nut that holds that outer tie rod end to the knuckle. Now we're going to hit right here on the knuckle to break our outer tie rod end free from the knuckle.
Turn your outer tie rod end counter-clockwise and count the amount of times it turns around as you remove it. One, two, three, and so on. Okay. Write down that corresponding number so you can remember. Now it's going to be time to get the inner tie rod end off of here. Here's the new inner tie rod end. And if you were to look right along this edge right here, that's the area we're going to need to grab onto, and then turn this counter-clockwise to break it free and eventually remove it. So we'll come right under here with our nice long pliers and get it off of there. There we go.
There it is friends. Now it's going to be time to install our new inner tie rod end. You might notice that there's no grease fitting to be able to grease this. Really there is. The grease is going to come right through that hole right there and that'll happen through here, starting at this point right here at this fitting. Put grease here, it comes right through and then of course it fills up the boot on the inner tie rod end. All right. I put some thread locker on here. I'm just going to go ahead and start this thing by hand. Now that we have that, as far as we can get it by hand, let's go ahead and snug it up with our pliers. Bottomed out. Just give it a teeny bit more. Awesome. Let's remove that jam nut. Let's put a little bit of copper never seize on the inner tie rod end threads, and then we'll just work that jam nut up the inner tie rod end quite a bit here. Now that we have the threaded area coded, we have our outer tie rod end, let's go ahead and put that on. And we're going to count it in the same amount of threads that we counted the original one off. That was one, two, three, and so on.
Okay? Just bring this so it's close. Put that node off of there. Put this on there. Let's bottom that out. Now we're going to torque this nut to 48 foot-pounds. All right. So now that we have that torqued, we need to pay special attention to where the slot on the castle nut lines up with the hole in the stud. If it doesn't line up, you need to continue tightening until it does. Okay. So that looks pretty good. Let's try it. That slides right through, just pin it over. The cotter pin is going to ensure that there's no way that this nut can come loose. Now it's going to be time to tighten up your jam nut. To tighten this, we're going to turn it counter-clockwise. When you torque it, you would want to torque it to 37 foot-pounds if you have the ability.
Okay. Just make sure that it's nice and snug. By the time you're finished, make sure your outer tie rod end is nice and parallel to the ground or at least as parallel as it can be. Now it's going to be time to get the grease fitting out of here. Use your 8-millimeter. There it is. Let's clean off around the area. Grab your new grease fitting. We'll start it right in there by hand, and then we'll snug it up, nice and tight. Let's give it a little grease
Now let's get the wheel back up on here. Okay. Now with the wheel barely on the ground so it can't spin, we're going to torque the lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds. Torqued. If you have a center cover, put it on there now. Now that you've finished your service, go ahead and take it for a road test and make sure you get it down to a local reputable alignment shop.
Tools used
Tools used
You want to keep in mind when you're doing this job after you're done, you're going to want to go to a local garage and have the vehicle aligned so you don't have premature tire wear. Take the center cap off. I'll just use a straight blade screwdriver, just get behind here, slide it off. Take the lug nuts off. Use a 22-millimeter socket. Gonna take the wheel off. [inaudible 00:00:34] off this jam nut. I'm going to use a 7/8 wrench. And just take some rust penetrant, this thing is a little bit rusty so let that soak a little bit. Gonna take a 18-millimeter socket, take this nut off. And take a hammer and just hit the bottom of the tie rod to release it from the knuckle. Just like that.
Now when I take off the tie rod, just count how many turns you have. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7...21, 22 and write that number down. Now I'm going to take a large adjustable wrench and loosen up the inner tie rod end. And loosen this up and just slide it off. Take a little thread locker, put it on the threads before you put the new one on and line it up. And then use my adjustable wrench to tighten this up. If you have the ability to use a torque wrench and torque this, you want to torque this to 74 foot-pounds. And take the outer tie rod, one, two, and then count the turns that you counted before. Three...21, 22. Take the jam nut not off...I mean the castle nut off and slide it in the knuckle. Slide the stud part into the knuckle. Put the nut on. Just gonna use a pry bar, pry down on the outer tie rod in to prevent the stud from spinning, and just snug this up a little bit. Use the 18-millimeter socket. And torque this to 37 foot-pounds. And if the hole doesn't line up for the cotter pin, just tighten the castle nut until it lines up. Little more. Should be good. Put the cotter pin through. And take my cutters and just bend this over then just trim the excess.
Tighten up this jam nut. I'm going to use a 13/16 wrench, and if you have the ability to torque it, torque it to 36 foot-pounds. There's a grease fitting right here. Just take a grease gun and give it a couple pumps. And I really give it a couple of pumps until I see the boot move a little bit. And that's good. Put the wheel back on. And the lug nuts. And now I'm gonna torque these lug nuts in a star pattern or cross pattern to 140 foot-pounds to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again, double-check. And put the center cap on.
Tools used
One of the first things you want to do is safely raise and support your vehicle by the frame so your suspension can hang. Once you've done that, take a small pry bar and we're going to take off this center cap. If you were to spin it, you're going to see a little notch in the cap. Just carefully slide this off of here. That exposes our 22-millimeter lug nuts. Remove all six. Remove your wheel. Now let's remove our 21-millimeter nut. Let's just put that nut on, just a couple threads. Now we're going to take a hammer and we're going to hit right here on the knuckle. You want to be very careful for your brake rotor.
Now that the wheel is off, we have a clear view of where we're going to start working. We're going to disconnect the electrical, this is the ABS right here, and it's very delicate. I'm just gonna come right up along here, and you're gonna see where it's supposed to be mounted to the frame. Should be pretty secure. This is missing about half of its clip, so I'll make sure I secure it in afterward. This purple right here is a little lock, it's holding it from coming separated. I like to just come right in between here, pop that up. Now we'll separate this, just take a peek, make sure you don't see any funny colors. If you were to come right down along here, we're gonna get this clip off of here as well. Just give it a little twist, lift it up, grab that ABS wire, carefully set it aside. The next thing we're going to do is remove this 10-millimeter headed bolt. The next thing we're gonna do is remove the nut that holds the upper ball joint to the knuckle. Okay. That comes right off. I'm just gonna go ahead and put it on there just a couple threads for now. Now let's use a 36-millimeter socket to remove our axle nut. Behind there, there's a washer. Go ahead and remove that as well. Let's go ahead and blast this with some penetrant.
The next thing we need to do is separate the axle from the bearing. I'm going to use this punch right here and go right in the center. You definitely don't wanna use a hammer and potentially damage the threads. The next thing we need to do is remove our mounting bolts that hold the caliper to the knuckle, use an 18-millimeter. Carefully hang your caliper, so it's putting no pressure on your flex hoses. So, now let's just double-check to make sure this upper ball joint nut is still on there a few good threads, it hasn't loosened upon us. And then we'll move down here to the lower ball joint nut. Remove that as well. Take that, and just put it on a couple threads.
Okay, so now it's gonna be time to separate the upper ball joint from the knuckle right here. Pay special attention to anything that's delicate that you don't want ruined, such as an ABS wire. Make sure that that's secure and safely out of the way. Go ahead and take your nice little hammer. And we're going to bonk right here on the knuckle itself. As you can tell it's separated, we can move along. So, now let's push down on this. Remove that nut. And carefully draw this down. Now if you're worried the knuckle with a rotor is going to be too heavy, you can go ahead and use a Torx bit right here, remove that bolt, and take the rotor right off. The problem with removing it like that is you're gonna have to clean up the mating surface between the wheel bearing and the rotor itself. So, now I'm going to take my hammer again and I'm going to come right down here and we're going to hit right on the knuckle itself until this comes down. There we are. Carefully lift up, remove the ball joint nut. Carefully lower this down, remove your knuckle.
The next thing you're going to want to do is support your lower control arm so that you're not putting maximum pressure on your front shock/strut. If you are, you can potentially damage it, because we're going to be using a hammer and we're going to hit right here on the lower ball joint to break it free.
Now to install the lower ball joint, we're gonna want to take the boot off of it first. So, I'm just going to use a nice small screwdriver, pry bar, weasel it in between. Then just kind of separate the two. Be careful not to damage the boot, of course, because we're going to be using it. The next thing we need is a ball joint kit with a cup that's going to fit right up against this lip. We're going to come right underneath, and then we're going to press this right up and in. Right along the bottom. I'm going to use a cup that looks like this, with a hole in the bottom, that's for the stud to go through. It's going to press right up against this ridge right here. Take this cup, something that's hollow enough to make sure that the top part of the ball joint can fit inside. Put it right over the top. Now we're going to take our ball joint C-clamp, put it right over the top, bottom it out. Just check to make sure that the cup is centered to approximately where the ball joints going to be.
Now we're going to tighten this up. As we do that, we want to check this ridge and make sure it matches up directly along this control arm. As you can tell, the ball joint ridge is directly against the control arm right here. Before I release any pressure, I'm just going to give the control arm a couple light bonks with my hammer, just for a little bit of vibration to help make sure this is seated securely. That should be pretty great. Carefully remove your tool. Make sure you install your clamp. To do that, just use these little pliers right here. They fit inside the holes, and then you can spread it. Slide it right over. Make sure it's sitting inside the roof all the way around. If it isn't, just work at it until it is. Now we're going to install our boot. Just carefully bring it up here. I like to try to start it on one side, so I'll go on the side farthest away from me. Then I'll use some pliers and just kind of roll the lip right on. Obviously, be careful not to poke any holes in the boot. Inspect it for any damage. Make sure that it's completely secured. This looks perfect.
Go ahead and take your knuckle. I'm going to start it on the axle a little bit, then slide it over the lower ball joint stud. Lift it up. Kink it to the side and start on that lower ball joint nut. Wiggle the axle around. Should slide right in. Now we're going to use a bar, we're going to pull this upper ball joint down into here. Get the nut, go ahead and start it on there. Just going to take my bar, and try to hold pressure on the lower ball joint to the knuckle. And then we're going to go ahead and try to tighten it up. So, now you'd want to torque this to 37-foot-pounds. If for some reason you can't get your torque wrench in there, like I can't, I would just continue with my wrench and make sure it's nice and tight. [vocalization]. Perfect.
Now it's time to torque up that lower ball joint nut as well. Torque it to 37-foot-pounds. Now what we want to do is make sure that our slot is lined up with the hole that goes through the ball joint stud, so we can make sure we install our cotter pin. Go ahead and slide that through. If for some reason yours is not lined up when you torqued it, you need to continue tightening, not loosening, until it's lined up with the next available slot. Go ahead and peen that over and lock it in. All right. So, now it's gonna be time to get the caliper on here. Just go ahead and slide it right over the rotor. Now we're gonna line up those bolt holes. I like to use some red threadlocker on these bolts. And start them in there. Okay. Let's bottom them out. Now let's go ahead and torque these 248-foot-pounds. Now we'll just go ahead and take that tie rod end, put right through the knuckle. Take your nut, start it on there. We're gonna bottom it out. Now you're gonna torque this to 44-foot-pounds. That's torqued.
The next thing we're gonna do is look to see if we can find the hole in the stud of the tie rod and match it with the next corresponding slot on the tie rod stud nut. This doesn't line up, so what I need to do now is I need to continue tightening until it does. I can see right through. I'm going to grab that locking cotter pin and install it. Slide that right on through and just peen it over. There's no way that this nut can come loose. Now it's going to be time to get the washer with the axle nut on there. Go ahead and slide the pair on. Go ahead and use your 36-millimeter socket, bottom it out, and then we'll torque it. Just gonna put a little splash of never-seize in here, I've got my mounting bolt. Let's use our 10-millimeter and snug it up. Make sure it's fully secured, make sure there's nothing binding your flex hose for your brakes are not twisted in any way.
Now it's time to get our ABS wire re-secured. Let's go ahead and put it in right here. Make sure it cannot come loose. If this can hang around and move around, it could potentially get damaged. Go ahead and connect this in now. Listen for a click, give it a tug. Go ahead and slide in your lock. Now we're going to take our mounting hardware here and just slide it right down in there. It's just a little push clip. Give it a nice tug, make sure it's definitely secured.
So, of course, next, you'd want to go ahead and torque down this nut right here. And that's going to be torqued to 177-foot-pounds. You can do that several ways. If you were to just do it like this, what you're going to notice is it just keeps spinning. If that was the case, what you would do is you can use a pry bar coming straight through these lug studs like this down to the ground. And so it holds it from spinning on you and then you would torque it. If you didn't want to go through the process doing that you can go ahead and throw the wheel up on there and then go through the center hole, which is the way that I'm going to do it.
We'll grab those lug nuts, start them all on there. Let's bottom these out. Now we'll bring it down to the ground and we'll make it so the wheel is just barely touching enough so the wheel can't spin. It's time to torque down this axle nut, 177-foot pounds like I said. Torqued. Now let's do the lug nuts,140-foot-pounds. Go crisscross. Torqued. Now it's gonna be time to get the center cover on. Before you go ahead and pound it on there, just take a look at the back, you're going to see something that looks a lot like a valve stem. Line it up. It's gonna go pretty much just like this. Light bonk, and then, of course, clean up your wheel, make it look nice and pretty and take it for a road test.
Tools used
Tools used
So before you do this job, you wanna keep in mind that after you're done, you're gonna have to go to an alignment shop and have the vehicle aligned so you don't burn out your tires and have premature tire wear. Now, I'm gonna remove the wheel. Use a 22-millimeter socket. Take off the lug nuts. Take the wheel off.
Now, I wanna get this wheel speed sensor wire out of the way. I'm gonna use a trim tool to remove the hold downs, this one right there and right here. And then disconnect the connector up top. I just wanna move it out of the way. Now, I'm gonna remove this bracket for the brake hose. I'm gonna use a 10-millimeter socket to take this bolt out. Oh. And sometimes they'll break. That's okay. Just set it aside.
Now, I'm gonna loosen up this nut. I'm not gonna completely take it off. I just wanna loosen it using an 18-millimeter wrench. All right. So I'll leave a couple of threads on there. That's good. Now, I'm gonna break the ball joint free from the knuckle. I'm gonna use a pickle fork. You could try tapping the knuckle, but you wanna be careful. You don't wanna break it. Just watch out for the brake hose. Make sure you're not hitting the brake hose on the other side. There we go.
Now, I'm gonna support the lower control arm with a jack stand. I wanna take the load off the upper control arm. Just lower it onto that. You could always use a floor jack. All right. Now, I'm gonna take a pry bar and just pry down on the control arm and then I can take the nut off of the ball joint. And if the stud starts spinning, just pry down on the pry bar a little bit more and then take that nut off.
You can slide the knuckle out. I could leave it right there for now. I'm gonna take these bolts out next. So that you don't break the axle, you wanna make sure that you keep the knuckle pulled in towards the vehicle so it doesn't pull out too far. So you can always use a strap like this and just tie this down so it doesn't fall out. Right now, I'm gonna use a 21-millimeter wrench on the bolt here and either a 13/16 or a 20-millimeter wrench on this side. Loosen the nut up. I might need a breaker bar. Yep.
Or you can use a 21-millimeter socket as well. Break it free. Loosen up the nut. And then take that nut off. You can take this cam off. This is like a washer that's adjustable. You can use some type of pry tool. And just slide that out. I'm gonna use an air hammer with a hammerhead and just push this bolt out. To get this bolt out, if this bracket is in your way, you can just tip up the control arm. Use a 13-millimeter socket to take this bolt out. Just slide the bracket out of your way. Just be careful not to bend the brake line. Now, just take a punch and a hammer and just tap it out the rest of the way. And you can do the same on the other side. And when you're taking that other side out, you don't have to take the shock out. You just have to rotate the cam so that it goes behind the shock.
Now, I'll just grab the upper control arm, and work it back and forth, then you can slide it up. And take the new arm. Just slide it in position and then take the bolts with the inside cam. There we go. All right. So on the outside of these cams, these have these little nylon or plastic spacers right here. That's going to make it so the alignment's close to where it should be. It's not gonna be exact. You still need to get an alignment done after you're done. So when you put these on and you put that tab through that hole, if you still have these on the vehicle, then it's gonna be close. That'll get you somewhat close to where it should be. Install the nuts. There we go.
All right. So when I go to torque these 2 bolts down, what I wanna use is my 13-millimeter, 13/16 wrench. And I want this upper control arm to be as close to ride height as possible. Ideally, you put this all back together and put the weight of the vehicle on it, and then retorque that. But that's not that easy to get to. So try to get the upper control arm as close to ride height as possible. Sometimes you take a 12-millimeter socket, just stick it under here, and that's pretty close.
And then you wanna torque this to 140 foot pounds, both this one and the other one. And once those are all torqued, you can take the socket out. Now, I can take this strap out of the way, and take the brake hose, line this back up. Put the bolt in and snug it up. Now, I'll get the ball joint lined up. You might have to use a pry bar. Get the nut started. Now, I'm gonna pry down on the control arm and then tighten that nut. Use a 19-millimeter ratchet wrench. Then if you have the ability to torque this nut, you're gonna wanna torque that to 37 foot pounds or do the best you can.
That's good. Now, I'll take this bracket for the brake hose and take a bolt. Put the bolt back in and snug it up. Take the ABS wire or the wheel speed sensor harness, and reposition this. And plug the connector back in. That's good. All right. Now you can take the grease fitting and put that in the ball joint. Get that started. And use a 7-millimeter wrench and just snug it up and give it a couple pumps. You can watch the boot of the ball joint, and then once you see it move, then it should be good enough. That's good. Now, I'm gonna raise the vehicle and reinstall the wheel. And put the lug nuts on. Now, I'm gonna torque these lug nuts to 140 foot pounds in a cross pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. I'll just go around again and double-check.
Tools used
I'm gonna use a 22-millimeter socket, take off the lug nuts so we can remove the wheel. Now remove the wheel. I'm going to take these two caliper slide bolts out. I'm going to use an 18-millimeter socket. Get those free first. And slide those out. Now I'll take a screwdriver. I'm just going to pry the pistons of the caliper in a little bit. Just go in between the caliper and the rotor. Make it easier to take the caliper off. Now you can take a brake caliper hanger and support the brake caliper itself. Just hook it on the upper control arm or fold the caliper over and just set it so that it doesn't fall. Just make sure there's no tension on the brake hose. Now we can take the brake pads off. Just use a straight blade screwdriver. Just pry them off. Now we want to take the caliper bracket off. We're going to take these two bolts out. I'm gonna use an 18-millimeter socket. Loosen those up. Take those bolts out and slide the bracket off.
Take the rotor off. If your rotor is stuck on there, you can take a hammer and just hit in these areas. Just be careful of not hitting the studs. Slide it off. Now I'm going to take the ABS sensor off or the wheel speed sensor off. Disconnect the wire. This one has wire ties on it holding it on, but normally you just pop it out of the bracket right here. Right there. You can just slide under this retainer and slide it out. And then same with this. Where the connector is disconnect the connector, and just slide it out of the way.
Now we'll take the axle nut off, use a 36-millimeter socket. And take this washer off. You can use a magnet. And can just take a hammer, just give the axle a tap. Just make sure it's loose. You don't want to hit it too hard. You don't want to mushroom the end over because then you won't be able to get the nut on after, or you could always use a punch and tap it with a punch. Now there's three bolts on the backside of the knuckle. Take those three bolts out. Use a 15-millimeter socket. Just be careful of the CV boot. You don't want to rip the CV boot. At least get those loose. They may not come out because of the CV boot, but you could push the axle back and get them out. Now you can slide those bolts out or just leave them in there, either way.
Normally, you'll have a dust shield here. So keep that in mind. This vehicle doesn't have one but I'm going to take the hub off. Just use a hammer and just give it a tap on the backside. Try to get it separate from the knuckle. You just go back and forth. And slide it off. And if you had that shield, you'd have to slide the ABS sensor off the shield and reuse the shield when you put it back together. You can use a wire brush to clean this up a little bit and then just use a little bit of copper anti-seize just around here and just so it doesn't seize up. So if in the future you ever have to take off the hub again. All right. At this point, you would take that shield and run the ABS wire through the shield or wheel speed sensor wire, and then slide this in position. And put these bolts back in.
And now I'm going to torque all 3 of these bolts to 133 foot-pounds. Now take the wheel speed sensor wire and put it through that bracket. Slide under the brake hose and attach this to the upper control arm right there. And then this one is going to go right here. Push that through and connect the connector and then push the connector in on top. And take the washer, put the washer back on, put the nut on. Now I'm going to lower the vehicle down to the ground a little bit and use a pry bar to keep the hub from spinning. And I'm going to torque the nut to 177 foot-pounds. Just take a little anti-seize and just wipe it on the hub surface. Just a nice thin coat.
Now install the rotor. If you want to, you can put a lug nut on to hold the rotor on. Makes installing it a little bit easier. Keeps the rotor in place. And just slide the caliper bracket over the rotor. Take the bolts. You can put some thread lock adhesive on them. Now we're going to torque these bolts to 129 foot-pounds. Now I'm going to take the brake pads, put the brake pads on. Now, the warning indicator for the inboard pad, the one that goes on the inside, is going to be at the bottom. There's only one. There's nothing on the top. The one that goes in the outside has both squealers or warning indicators. Slide those in position.
Now I need to compress the pistons back into the caliper. You can use a piston compressing tool. They make different types of tools. This is a ratchet type. As I tighten this up, it's going to push the piston back into the caliper, which is going to push the brake fluid through the hoses, through the lines, and back up into the master cylinder. Just go nice and slow. You don't want to rush this. The slower, the better. Those pistons are compressed. Now slide the caliper over the brake pads. Now you can take the two brake caliper bolts. Clean them off with some brake parts cleaner. Wipe them off. These aren't too bad. And just take some brake caliper grease, put it on the guide pins. Now install the caliper bolts or guide pins. And torque those to 80 foot-pounds.
Now you can take this lug nut off and put the wheel back up. Now put the tire back on. And the lug nuts. Now I'm going to 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. Now, after you're done, you want to make sure you pump up the brake pedal nice and slow. There's going to be an air gap between the caliper piston and the brake pads. So just do that until that feels pretty good. And then double-check your brake fluid level and adjust accordingly.
Tools used
Normally, there is a shield right here, you wanna take that shield off. There'll be four or five 15-millimeter bolts. Take that off, get it out of your way. Now, we're gonna take this nut off. On this vehicle, there's a cotter pin. So, I'll just use some side cutters, take this cotter pin off. Just bend it back a little bit and just pry it out. And sometimes they break. There we go. Now, I'm gonna take a 22-millimeter socket, take this nut off. Now, I wanna remove that stud from the steering linkage that goes through the idler arm. I'm gonna use a tool like this, it's gonna press it out. You can use a couple other methods. You could use a pickle fork, try to get it out this way...that way. Just gonna put the nut on to stabilize the tool so it doesn't fall off. All right. While that's on there tight, I'm just gonna give it a tap with the air hammer, see if the vibrations loosen it up. So, that didn't work out. So, I'm gonna try a pickle fork. Sometimes these are tricky to get to separate. There we go.
Now, I'm gonna take these two bolts out. I'm gonna use a 21-millimeter wrench. On the backside, there's a nut and then a 21-millimeter socket on the front. Get that nut off. Take the bolt out. And just grab the idler arm and the housing and just slide it up. If you were gonna replace one of these pieces or the other, you can separate that nut. Just gonna put the housing in the vise, make it easier to install. Take the nut off. All right. Take the idler arm, put the nut on, take a 24-millimeter socket and snug it up. Now, I'm gonna take this castle nut off. And get this in position. As you slide the housing in the bracket, you wanna make sure the idler arm goes through the steering linkage. Get the bolts lined up. And put the nuts on the backside. Now, I'll tighten these down. Then torque both of those bolts to 73 foot-pounds. Now, install the castle nut and tighten that up. And then torque this to 46 foot-pounds. And find the hole through the stud and you can use the cotter pin, slide it through. If it doesn't fit or if you can't get it to line up, you can tighten the nut up a little more so it does line up. There we go. And use some side cutters and just bend this like this. And then you can trim the excess. Now, if you have that shield right here, reinstall that shield.
Tools used
Before you start, you wanna be aware that after you're done this job, you're gonna wanna go to an alignment specialist so that you can have the vehicle aligned so you don't wear out the tires prematurely.
I'm gonna remove the wheel. Use a 22-millimeter socket. Take the lug nuts off. And take the wheel off. I'm gonna loosen up the jam nut. You can use a 22-millimeter wrench or a 7/8 wrench. Just get that loose. That's good. I'm just gonna spray a little rust penetrant on here. And use an 18-millimeter socket, take this nut off. And if the nut doesn't come off and the stud starts spinning, you can use an 8-millimeter socket to hold that stud from spinning, and then just use the wrench to take the nut off. Now you can take a hammer and just give a tap on the bottom of the tie rod, or take a pickle fork and separate it this way. Just if you use a pickle fork, it's probably gonna rip the boot right here. I'm just gonna give it a hit right here. There we go. And now we're gonna take the outer tie rod off. As we unscrew this, just count the threads. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 23, 24. So write that number down. And when you go to put it back together, you're gonna count them to put the other one in the same position that that one was in.
Now I'm gonna take off the inner tie rod end. I'm gonna use a large adjustable wrench because I don't have a wrench that's big enough to fit this. Slide this over and loosen it up. And eventually we'll get that off. Take the inner tie rod end and get this started. Now we're gonna tighten this up with the adjustable wrench. If you have the ability to torque this, you wanna torque this to 74-foot-pounds. Just do the best you can. That's good. Then you wanna take a grease gun and hook it up to this grease fitting and give it a couple pumps. You can do it until you start seeing the boot move a little bit, then you know there's plenty of grease in there. And take the new tie rod end. Get this started. Make sure you count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 22, 23, 24 and line this up in the knuckle. Take the castle nut, get that started. Now, what you can do is to prevent the stud from spinning, you can take a pry bar, just pry in between the knuckle and pry down on the tie rod, use an18-millimeter socket and tighten this up. And tighten this to 37-foot-pounds. And then just check to see where the hole is for the castle nut. And if you need to, you can snug it up a little bit more to get it to line up. And that that hole lines up. Now take the cotter pin, slide it through, actually we'll slide it through this way and take some side cutters and just bend it. Tap it out of the way, and then trim off the excess. And we'll snug up the jam nut and tighten that to 50-foot-pounds. Put the wheel back on and the lug nuts. I'm gonna take these lug nuts down to 140-foot-pounds, and I'm gonna do it in a cross pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. Just go around again. Double-check.
Tools used
Tools used
Tools used
Tools used
All right, friends. So, one of the first things we need to do is safely raise and support the vehicle. Once you've done that, you wanna come right upfront to this skid plate right here. Go ahead and remove all 15-millimeter bolts that hold it in. Now, that that's out of the way, let's come right over here to where the idler arm comes down through this arm right here, remove the 21-millimeter nut.
Now, the next thing we would need to do to get this arm out of here, is of course try to drop this sway bar out of the way. If your bolts look like ours do, and you think that they're gonna be an issue, I would just skip right past that and we'll come right up here and we'll remove the whole idler unit right here. To get this out of here, we're gonna use a 21-millimeter right there, and then we'll use a 21-millimeter wrench on the nut side.
Let's put a nice piece of wood in between the frame and this bar right here, just to make it so this bar can't go up too far while we hammer on this right there. Now that that's out of there, we can grab right onto this and we'll get it out of the vehicle. Now, when you're replacing your idler arm bracket assembly here, you're gonna have to remove it from the idler arm. To do that, you'd remove this nut right there, and then you'd do something as simple as a pickle fork coming in between here, or you could even use a puller to separate the two. Odds are, if your idler arm bracket assembly is no good, more than likely at the joint at the idler arm itself is no good as well. In which case I would just replace the both as a pair, that's much easier that way as you can tell. But for the purpose of this video, I'll still show you how to get them apart.
Now to remove this, I like to have it nice and level on the ground and I'll put my foot on it. I'm gonna have it so it's facing down towards the left, so when I remove this and it tries to spin, you can't go anywhere. I'm just gonna use this pickle fork right here, put it right in between the joint, and then give it a couple of loving bonks with my hammer. As you can tell, the two separated at this point, this joint is no good, but that's okay, we're replacing this anyway.
The next thing I like to do is put the unit right inside of a vise if you have access to one. You wanna grab onto this boot, take a look underneath there, make sure there's plenty of grease, go ahead and push it down, that feels great. Now we're gonna take that idler arm, set it right down on there. Take our brand new nut. You always wanna use a brand new nut, okay. So, now if I use my 24-millimeter wrench and I try to tighten this, what you're probably gonna notice is the stud on the inside is gonna start spinning once it gets to a certain point. Okay, so as you can see, it's spinning the stud. Is the nut all the way down? No it's not. So, now we're gonna use a hex bit and you wanna use an 8-millimeter. Come right inside there, that's gonna hold it and now we'll continue tightening this. Make sure it's nice and tight. That feels great.
It may be time to get our unit back up inside the vehicle here, spring it right up and in. Behind those lines, hopefully. Get that in the center link. Let's get this into its bracket. Okay, that looks decent, let's grab our two bolts. Make sure that they have washers, there right through. The other one, here we are. Let's grab the washers and the nuts for the other side. Now let's snug these up. Now let's go ahead and torque these down to 73 foot-pounds
Torqued. Let's get this nut on there. Snug it up, torque this to 46 foot-pounds. Torqued and use our locking cotter pin, slide it right on through there. And then make sure you pin it over, so there's no way this nut can come loose. Get this out of here. Awesome. Let's get this shield back up on here on, I'm gonna line up those holes. Start in all the bolts, before I tighten any of them down. Perfect. The next thing that I would wanna do, is make sure that I get it down to a reputable alignment shop.
Tools used
Tools used
You wanna keep in mind, when you're doing this job, after you're done, you're gonna wanna go to a local garage and have the vehicle aligned so you don't have premature tire wear.
Disconnect the battery. Disconnect the negative terminal. Use an 8-millimeter wrench. Disconnect that, just slide it out of the way.
You wanna make sure the steering wheel is centered, and you want to lock the steering wheel somehow. What you can do is take the seat belt and just go through the steering wheel and then buckle the seat belt. That way, it'll keep the steering wheel from turning.
All right, take the wheel off. We wanna remove the hubcap. Use a straight-blade screwdriver, slide that off. Use a 22-millimeter socket, take the lug nuts off. Remove the wheel.
I'm gonna take this panel off, use a 15-millimeter socket, take these bolts out. There's four bolts. Slide that down.
Take this cotter pin off. Just use some side cutters. Now, remove this nut. Use a 21-millimeter socket. So, now you can try to use different types of tools to separate this. I'm just gonna use a puller. You can try something like this or you can try something like a pickle fork to try to get it in there.
I'm gonna try to use a pickle fork now. Here we go. We're gonna pull this power steering hose off the steering box right here. You may have a clamp that's holding it on, this one happens to have a worm clamp. Use a 7-millimeter socket. If you have the regular style clamp, just use some pliers. You might wanna put a drain bucket underneath because you're gonna lose some fluid. Take that off.
Now I wanna take this steering line off, use an 18-millimeter wrench. It's not easy to get in there with a wrench. If you have a crows foot, that would work a little better. But just do the best you can.
So, our line is rusted at the top of the steering box and it's not breaking free. In our situation, I'm gonna have to take it off the brake booster. I'm gonna use a 16-millimeter wrench and loosen this up. But, ideally, if you can get it off the top of the box, steering box, then that would be ideal. And I can slide this line out from here. Now I'll just take this line out with the steering box. Just like that. And then, on the top of the steering box, we need to take the linkage that connects this to the lower steering column. There's an 11-millimeter bolt, take that out. Pull that bolt out. It's a good idea to replace this bolt whenever you take it out.
Let's just take a pry bar, get in between the lower steering shaft and your steering box and just pry it up to try to separate the two.
So, I'm gonna try to get this off the rest of the way from underneath. Take your pry bar, try to get in between that groove right there. Just try to hammer it up. All right, that's popped off. It's good.
Now we need to take these three bolts out. There's one behind the shields right there. Use a 21-millimeter socket. Take these out. All right, I'm gonna take the last one out. Just loosen those so they're loose like that.
[inaudible 00:04:53] steering box, just lift it up because you gotta pull that pitman arm out. Twist it sideways so we still have that line connected. And here we go.
Now I'm gonna use a 34-millimeter socket to take this nut off. Take that off. Now this is a dust seal right here. Just get a straight-blade screwdriver and just push it up. Just get that out of the way so we can put our tool on and put the pitman-arm remover on. Here we go.
Now there is four key ways for this to line up. So, install this the same way that the old one came off. Put the lock washer on, put the nut on, and tighten this up. And then do the best you can, put this in a vise and then torque this nut to 180 foot-pounds.
And then slide this dust boot back down. Just like that. Looks good.
Now I'm gonna send the hose up first. You know, if you were able to not have to have the hose connected, then you don't have to do this part. And slide the box in position. You wanna get the pitman arm through that steering bar...just like that. Make sure that's lined up first. Move this around a little bit and get one of these bolts started. And you can try to get the other one started as well. I'm gonna have to rotate this a little bit.
Now I'm gonna torque these bolts to 110 foot-pounds. Now put this nut on. And we're gonna torque this nut to 46 foot-pounds.
Now if the hole's not lined up for the cotter pin, you can tighten the nut a little bit more. It's better to tighten it than loosen it. And that looks good. A little more. Put the cotter pin in. Take some side cutters and just bend it...just like this. And trim the excess.
So, you just wanna make sure that the steering box, the wheels are straight just like it was when you took this shaft off. And just get this lined up. You can get it started while you're underneath. Or you can try to do it from up top.
All right, let's slide the steering shaft onto the box, or the gear. That's lined up. Now you put that bolt in. And do the best you can with torquing this, it might be a little bit better to torque this from underneath. You could get directly on it. You wanna torque that bolt to 37 foot-pounds. Okay, good.
Now I'm gonna run this hose back the way it came, up to the booster. And if you didn't take it off here, connect that hose down below.
All right, now snug this up. Now, if you have the ability to use a torque wrench, you can torque this nut, or the lower nut, on the steering box, to 20 foot-pounds. That's good.
Now install this hose. It goes to the cooler. And tighten this up, if you have a worm clamp, or use the hose clamp pliers. And just snug it up. And this cover, bolt's in. And tighten thee bolts down.
Now let's reconnect the battery. Give it a wiggle, make sure it's tight, and you're good to go.
Now we're gonna top off the fluid, take the cap off of the power steering pump. And then use a funnel, and check your owners manual, put in the appropriate fluid.
All right, so, I over filled this a little bit, which is okay. Now, with the front wheels off the ground and the cap off, you might still wanna put a bucket underneath. I'm gonna turn the wheel back and forth about 20 times. Slowly.
All right, we're gonna double check our fluid level. I haven't started the vehicle yet. And the fluid level's right there. Before I just suck some of the fluid out of there, I'm actually gonna start the vehicle, turn the wheel back and forth a couple times, and then recheck it and adjust accordingly.
Install the tire. Put the lug nuts on. All right, tighten these lug nuts down. I'm going to tighten them in a star pattern, or a cross pattern, to 140 foot-pounds to tighten the wheel down evenly. I'm just go around again, double-check. Take the center cap.
Tools used
Tools used
Tools used
Take the center cap off. Use a straight-blade screwdriver. Use a 22-millimeter socket. Take the lug nuts off. Pull the wheel off. These bolts are pretty rusty so I'm just going to use some rust penetrant and soak those before I start. Before we take this nut off, we just want to mark this cam right here. This is for the alignment. When you go to put this back together, you want to put this in the same location so at least it's close. You're still going to need to get an alignment done afterwards, but this will get it a little bit closer. I want to get this ABS wire out of the way, our wheel speed sensor wire. Disconnect the connector up here. Just push up on that tab, slide it out and use a trim tool. Just pull up on that retainer. You can do the same over here, and right here. Sometimes these ones break, just be careful. All right. So this piece is going to break so I'm just going to disconnect it right from the arm itself. And disconnect this right here. Sometimes you can use a screwdriver and just pop that out, or a needle-nose pliers also works. You just squeeze those together. I'm just going to put some rust penetrant on this bolt right here. Let that soak a little bit. We want to take that off next. Just remove this bracket. Use a 10-millimeter socket. Remove this bolt. It's probably going to break. Yup, it broke. Well, hopefully yours doesn't break. And slide that off.
All right. Now, we're going to take this nut off using an 18-millimeter wrench. Now I'm going to leave this nut on just a couple of threads, and then we're going to break this upper ball joint free from the knuckle. I'm going to use a pickle fork to break this free. Just slide it in, in between the ball joint and the knuckle and just give it a hit. There we go. Take the pickle fork out and just push down the upper control arm a little bit. You might need a pry bar. And take the nut off and you could slide it out. And just make sure that there's not too much tension on the brake line, brake hose. I'm going to take a 21-millimeter wrench, 21-millimeter socket. Now this is old and rusty so I just had to heat up that nut to break it loose. Normally you wouldn't have to do that. And loosen it up. That nut's pretty hot right now so I'm just going to let that cool down before I take that off. Take that nut off and see if you can pry this cam off. This is just the alignment cam. Just use a pry bar and a hammer. And just pry that off. All right. This cam bolt is stuck in there pretty good so I'm just going to use some more rust penetrant, soak it down for a while.
Here we go. All right. Get that out and do the same for the other side. All right. I'm just going to take this bracket out of the way. Just use a 13-millimeter socket and you can just slide it out of the way. Don't bend it too much. Here we go. And just use a pry bar and you can pry the arm out. And take the new control arm and just line it up. You can take a rubber mallet, or a dead-blow hammer to tap it in if you need to. And get the bolt started. And take this cam and the nut. Get the nut started. Now we tighten this up. Now we want to align that mark up. What you do is take your 21-millimeter wrench and just move the bolt on this side until that lines up. And you can snug that down. And we'll do the same for the other side. All right. Now, we're going to torque this nut to 140-foot-pounds. Do the same on the front one. Take this brake hose bracket and install that. Put the bolt back in and tighten that up. Get the nut off. Put that aside. Get this lined up with the upper knuckle. And I'll use a pry bar, just pry this down. Take the nut and get the nut started.
Now, I'm going to use a 19-millimeter ratchet wrench, while I'm using the pry bar to pry it down on the ball joint. Tighten this up. All right. Now, if you have the ability, just torque this with a torque wrench, you can torque this to 37-foot-pounds. Do the best you can. And if the stud starts spinning, you can use an allen key, that's a six-millimeter hex key. But if you use the pry bar and you just pry it down, you should be able to get that without having the stud spinning. Take this brake hose bracket and line that up. Put the nut on or the bolt in and snug it up. And take the wheel speed sensor wire and reconnect that. And then we have this holder or clip. Install that. Lock that in place. Reinstall this clip and connect the connector. And push the retainer. I'm just going to find the hole where it goes. There it is. And lock that in position. And take this fitting. Install that. Snug it up with a seven-millimeter wrench.
And take a grease gun and give it a couple pumps of grease. What you can do is look at the boot as you're greasing it, once you see the boot start to move, that's good enough. And put the wheel back up. Put the lug nuts on. Now I'm going to torque these lug nuts to 140-foot-pounds in any star pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again, double check. Install the center cap.
Tools used
Tools used
877-844-3393
Monday - Friday 8:00am - 9:30pm ET
Saturday - Sunday 8:00am - 4:30pm ET
Specify your vehicle's year, make and model to guarantee fit.
This part doesn’t fit a . Select from parts that fit.
If your vehicle isn't listed, search Steering & Suspension Kits
If your vehicle isn't listed, search Steering & Suspension Kits