1997 Dodge Ram 3500 Truck Rear Wheel Drive with Independent Front Suspension Front Driver Side Sway Bar Link TRQ PSA67759

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet.

Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks

In this video, we're going to show you how to replace the stabilizer bar links on this Ford Explorer Sport Trac. It's the same process for many of the Explorer Sport Tracs, as well as the regular Explorer Mountaineer, Ranger, etc. We show you on the right side, but the driver side is the same procedure. Items that you'll need for this repair are new stabilizer links from 1AAuto.com, a jack, 16mm and 18mm sockets with two ratchets or wrenches, and you'll need a reciprocating saw if your link is as rusty as ours is, and then some penetrating oil.

Our truck was making some rattling noises, and we can feel a little bit of clunking in the steering wheel. Coming under here, this is your stabilizer bar, and it's linked to the control arm with these links. When you grab hold and shake them, they should be nice and firm. This isn't the best shot, but as you can see, as we grab hold and shake it, it'll move around some. That's causing some of our clunking and rattling.

This repair, actually you can keep the wheel on. I just have it off to make it a lot easier to film. What I've got here is you can see that the lift is underneath the frame so it's supporting it, and I just have the jack under here to put the weight back on so that you can see I can grab hold of the link and move it back and forth. That's how it would be if it was just sitting on its tire as well, but this makes it a lot easier to video.
We use some penetrating oil and spray the top of the shaft. You'll see that was kind of a [mute 00:01:51] point. 16mm socket on the bottom and then an 18mm socket and ratchet on top. You're going to see it just breaks apart, which is actually a good thing.

I can see the condition is really bad, but I'm still going to make a half-hearted attempt. Spray the stud down with some penetrating oil. Then I take a few whacks at it with a hammer, but it makes no movement at all. I'm going to bring in the big guns. Lock onto that top stud with some locking pliers to hold it from spinning. Then, a reciprocating saw, and I'll fast-forward here as we cut through down at the other bushing. There you go. Your old one is out.

Take your new link. Just remove the nut, remove the top two bushings and washers, the shaft, and one of the bottom bushings and washers. You just now have the shaft and one washer and bushing at the bottom. Put it up through, put one bushing and washer with the washer up on, and then put the sleeve on. Jacking up the side you're working on and letting the wheel hang down some will help you get extra space. Now put the washer close to the sleeve and put the bushing on. The little step should go into the sway bar, then push the link up through. Put the top bushing on, then the washer, and the nut. I just jacked the suspension up a little bit more. If you're not taking the wheel off, you would let it down a little bit just so you can get things together and thread the nut on.

You want to replace the other side. You can see I've replaced it. I did it with the wheel on, and I've also tightened it up. Now you want to tighten them up. The new links may be a slightly different size. I think it's a 16mm link and a 17mm nut. When you tighten them up, you basically want to tighten them, make sure that the vehicle is in the correct ride position. Again, if you're just doing it with the wheels on, it's a little simpler, because with the wheels on it's in the correct ride position. You're basically tightening it up until the bushings push out enough so that they're the same kind of size or diameter as the metal washers. If you do end up taking your wheel off, make sure you reinstall it and torque the lug nuts to 100 foot-pounds each.

Thanks for tuning in. We hope this video helped you out. Next time you need parts for your car, please visit 1AAuto.com. Also check out our other helpful how-to and diagnosis videos.

Hey friends, it's Len here at 1A Auto. Today we're working on our 1996 Dodge Ram 1,500 and I want to show you something very basic, replacing front sway bar links. It's going to be super easy. I can do it and you can do it too, and as always if you need this or any other part, you can always check us out at 1aauto.com, thanks.

So one of the first things we're going to do is take off this cotter pin. You can probably do the majority of this without actually having to take off the wheel. It's a little easier with the wheel off, and of course for video purposes it's much easier with the wheel off. If you can't get this cotter pin out, no big deal. Just cut it, break it, do whatever you got to do. There we are. We're going to remove this castle nut right here and this nut up here, and we should be able to get the sway bar link out.

So we're going to take this off right here. 17 millimeter. The same thing for up there. 17 millimeter, ratchet, airgun, whatever you got to do. Using an air gun, of course, make sure you're wearing hand protection and eye protection. There we are. The nut's still in there. put it on a second there. Get it off of there. Set this aside. Nut's on there. There it is. Set that aside. Hammer. We're going to try to bonk this through. Once you get it through this side, it'll come down this side. There we are. Doin' it right. We just got to get it all the way out of there. Let's see. Of course there's grease. Kind of is what it is. That bushing off of there. We don't need that. Cool. Let's take apart the other side at the same time. At that point, the bar will be able to move around and we'll be able to get this out much easier.

All right, so we went over and we did the same thing to the other side. Got it so the sway bar link's ready to come out. Now we can wiggle this bar around a little bit and that's nice because it's going to give us the amount that we need to be able to get this out. Just going to grab a pry bar, just walk this around a little bit and there's our sway bar link. Let's do a quick product comparison and we'll move along.

So here we are friends, a quick product comparison for you. Over here you have your original sway bar link out of the front of a 1996 Dodge Ram 1,500. We just took it out. And over here you have your brand new quality 1A Auto part. Both these parts are created equal. You've got the same overall length, which is very important. You don't want one that's way higher or longer than the other one way or the other. Okay. This comes with a brand new nut right here. Very important. It's got a sealed boot. That's great because it's going to keep the moisture out of there for you. Down this end, take this off of here, you have a neoprene locking nut. Super important. You want to make sure that this doesn't loosen up when you're going down the road. Brand new washers, there's two of them, and of course the brand new bushings as well.

As you could tell, this comes with everything you need to go ahead and mount it into the vehicle. Even a brand new cotter pin. Thank you 1A. I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a quality part to install into the vehicle, so I'm going to go ahead and do it. And as always, if you need this or any other part, you can always check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks

We'll take off this neoprene locking nut, one of the bushings and one of the washers. So those all right where we can grab onto them. Okay. Now this is important. The way that these bushings go, there's two sides. There's one with a little flappy thing right there, and then one that's rounded. This little flappy piton goes up inside here, or if you were looking at it from underneath, essentially this goes into the hole. Okay. Just right up in there. So you want to make sure that that faces towards the mounting area on the differential. Just like this. Get this nut off of here. Just going to bring this in. See if I can grab my pry bar. Pull down on this nice and easy. I'm just going to keep wiggling it around. There it is. Take our castle nut. That's the slotted nut, kind of looks a little bit like the top of a castle, that goes on the part with the sway bar. Okay. Grab our bushing, got a little piton. Just going to go in there. Okay.

Washer, they're kind of curved. This curves upward right here, and inward right there. They're not flat. I Don't know if you can see there. The curved up part faces up, it's going to go up like this. So the roundedness fits right in there. Very nice. Neoprene locking bolt, neoprene locking nut. That right on there. Awesome. We're going to do the same to the other side of the vehicle real quick, and then we'll go ahead and snug these down.

All right, so now what we're going to do is we're going to hold the sway bar link right along this edge right here. They made a nice area for you to grab onto with your pliers. I'm going to use a 16 millimeter. Tighten this up. When we tighten this, you don't want to go down until this rubber is completely flattened. You just want it so that this washer is touching and it's kind of squeezing it just a teeny weeny bit. Not very much. Little bit more. Check. Sure, feels good under there. That's perfect. Okay. So you see how much this is the squishing? It's not very much. I didn't crush it, so the washer is all the way down on here. It's not about that. It's just about making sure that it's tight enough so that the sway bar link can't move up and down, but not so tight that you're squeezing these so much that they're ready to blow right out of there.

Because then driving down the road, 100,000 miles, however long it takes, it's going to be a lot of pressure on these things and they're just going to give out over time. So the less amount of pressure on them, the better. We're just going to put this in. There we are. See if we can find where the slot is in the sway bar link. Looks like we're pretty close. Right there. Cool. It's a nice big cotter pin. I really didn't want it to come out. You're just going to bring this all the way down. There we are. Bring this over. Just like that. We know it's nice and tight. It's locked in, that and that right there can not come loose because it's got a dotter pin. This one can't come loose because it's got the neoprene lock in there. Let's move ahead and do the same to the other side.

Thanks for watching. Visit 1aauto.com, your place for DIY auto repairs, for great parts, great service, and more content.

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet.

Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

In this video, we're going to show you how to replace the front sway bar link on this 2003 Mercury Mountaineer, same as any 2002 to 2005 Mountaineer, as well as Explorer. Our front passenger side is broken, so we show you how to get it out and replace it with a new one from 1A Auto. You'll need new sway bar link from 1AAuto.com, 16mm and 19mm socket and ratchet, a piece of pipe for some leverage, jack and jack stands and a torque wrench.

You'll want to remove your center cap. If you don't have the benefit of air tools, then loosen your lug nuts with the vehicle on the ground. Then raise both front wheels and support the car with jack stands and then remove the lug nuts and wheel the rest of the way. Now you can pull the wheel free.

This is the driver side, which is actually still together, so you would, if you're removing one that was still together, put a 15mm socket and ratchet on top and a 16mm wrench on the bottom, remove that top nut and then go from there. On ours, it's broken so I'm just filling, basically, the cavity with penetrating oil. This is pretty typical: it breaks off up top here and you saw where you just filled it up with penetrating oil and now we're just messing around with it. We locked some locking pliers onto it. That penetrating oil really helped the bolt start up and we've basically broken the plastic here. Now this plastic tube will slide off.

We're just going to use a hammer and chisel to remove the rest of the plastic. This, of course, is the worst case scenario, you just want to remove the plastic, you can use some locking pliers and then just remove the nut on the bottom or at least loosen it up as much as you can. Then just hammer this down and out.

Before installing it, just jack up the other side, just slightly. Now replace your sway link and the order it should go in is: washer, bushing, control arm, then bushing, washer, the tube, and another washer, and then the bushing, and then your sway bar, then another bushing, another washer, and then the nut. You just want to tighten that nut preliminarily,and then release the jack.

To tighten up the link, what you want to do is have the car back down on the ground, and now I have a jack supporting just the front suspension so that basically everything is level and the suspension is in its correct ride height. Then tighten up the link by holding the wrench on top and then turning the bottom. Tighten it up so that the bushings are all squeezed to about the diameter of the washers.

Replace your wheel, then replace all the lug nuts and tighten them preliminarily. Then you'd want to lower the vehicle and tighten them the rest of the way, then torque each of these in a crossing pattern to 100 foot-pounds. Now replace your hubcap. Just line it up and hit it back into place.

We hope this video helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet. Please feel free to call us toll-free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the Internet and in person.