Replaces
Part Details
TRQ suspension kits are manufactured using premium raw materials and coatings for extended service life. Each TRQ suspension component is designed to be a direct, maintenance-free replacement to the stock unit. To extend the life of your steering and suspension components, TRQ recommends replacing components in pairs, sets, or kits. All products are fit and road-tested in our Massachusetts R&D facility to ensure we deliver on our promise of Trusted Reliable Quality.
Product Features
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 Lead and Lead Compounds, which are 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.
FREE Shipping is standard on orders shipped to the lower 48 States (Contiguous United States). Standard shipping charges apply to Hawaii and Alaska.
Shipping is not available to a P.O. Box, APO/FPO/DPO addresses, US Territories, or Canada for this item.
Expedited is available on checkout to the United States, excluding Alaska, Hawaii.
Final shipping costs are available at checkout.
Created on:
Tools used
Hi, I'm Mike from 1AAuto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years! We're dedicated to delivering quality auto parts, expert customer service, and fast and free shipping, all backed by our 100% satisfaction guarantee. We've created thousands of videos to help you install our parts with confidence. That saves you time and money, so visit us at 1AAuto.com, your trusted source for quality auto parts.
In this video, we're going to be working with our 2006 Ford Explorer. We're going to show you how to remove and replace your vehicle's lower control arm. Our new part comes with a ball joint in it.
If you like video, please click subscribe. We have a ton more information on this and many other vehicles. If you need this part for your truck, you can follow the link down in the description over to 1aauto.com.
Here are the items you'll need for this repair: full metric socket set, metric wrench set, ratchet, breaker bar, pry bar, hammer, rust penetrant, safety glasses, gloves, jack, jack stands
Using a 19mm socket and a breaker bar, loosen the lug nuts on your tire. Raise and support your vehicle. We're doing this on a lift to make it easier to show you what's going on, but this job can be done at home on a jack and jack stands. Finish removing your lug nuts. You should be able to do this by hand at this point. You can use a ratchet if you need to. You can then remove your wheel and tire.
It may be a good idea to apply some penetrating oil to whatever parts you're going to be working with. With a 16mm, put a 17mm wrench on the nut on the topside of your sway bar link and brace it against the frame of the vehicle. You can then use a 16mm socket and ratchet on the bottom to loosen it. The sway bar link on these vehicles is essentially a series of bushings and washers with a sleeve all held together by one long bolt, as opposed to being a one-piece unit like some other vehicles. You can see ours is pretty rough here, because there's usually not this much slack. That's actually what your bushing is supposed to look like on all four pieces, one on each side. You can see the old ones are worn down or cut there. It looks like they've actually fallen off over time. Once the nut's out, you can try to remove the bolt from the center of the sway bar link. This can be pretty difficult, so if it doesn't come out by hand, don't be afraid to get on there and give it a good hit with a hammer. The sway bar link will disassemble just like that when you pull it out, so just make sure you have all the old bushing material and all the old washers off of it.
Using a 24mm socket and ratchet, remove the bolt and the lower portion of the strut. This has a wing nut on it inside of the control arm that's going to rotate and jam up against the bottom, so you don't need to put a wrench on it. Just be ready to catch that when it does come out. The 24mm socket will loosen and remove the lower ball joint nut. Strike the side of the steering knuckle with a large hammer. Be sure to use this proper safety equipment. It should pop the ball joint free from the knuckle.
With a 24mm socket and ratchet, remove the 24mm nut on the rear of the lower control arm. This bolt is fixed in to the subframe. We'll loosen the nut until it's flush with the end of the bolt. Move the nut and slide that rear bolt out of your control arm. Using a 30mm axle socket and a breaker bar, loosen the nut on the front of the lower control arm. Once you get it moving, you'll probably need to brace the bolt side. That's going to be a 24mm wrench. Leave the nut flush with the end of the bolt so you can help tap it loose. Then you should be able to remove it by hand and pry your control arm down. Now at this point, as long as you have the lower ball joint released from the knuckle, you should be able to sneak everything out and remove your lower control arm from the vehicle.
Install the lower ball joint of your new lower control arm into the knuckle. You'll need to find the right angle to sneak this in at. Then just for safety, we'll start the new nut. Set the strut into the lower control arm and then line up the backs. Set the bolts into place and start the nuts. Now you could do this yourself with a pry bar, but to make things easier to line up, I'm going to have a helper push down on the spindle while we install the strut bolt. You may be able to use a pry bar to help line up that bottom bolt. You're going to want to send just the tip of the bolt through and install that flag nut on the backside by lining it up and trying to thread that strut bolt into it. Once you've got everything started, you can bring all your bolts down close before we preload the suspension and torque everything into place.
It's a 24mm socket and ratchet for the strut bolt. Again, we're just going to get that close for now. It's also a 24 on the backside of the rear control arm bolt. We'll then use the 24mm wrench on the bolt head and the 30mm socket and ratchet, this is usually an axle nut socket, on the backside of the front bolt. Torque the lower ball joint nut to 111 foot-pounds. Using a screw jack or a floor jack, put the weight of the vehicle onto it so the suspension is at ride height. This means when we torque down our bushings, everything will be in place with no preload. The strut bolt gets torqued to 248 foot pounds. We did need to rent a larger torque wrench to get these sizes, but it is still a 1/2" drive and still works with the sockets we already had. Using a 24mm wrench to hold the bolt and a 30mm socket and torque wrench, torque this to 296 foot-pounds. The nut on the rear control arm is also 24. That gets torqued to 148 foot-pounds.
Now you sort of need to build the sway bar link into the truck, so we'll start with a washer and then a bushing. We'll go up through the control arm, install a bushing with the tapered end down, followed by another washer, the sleeve, a washer with the cup end facing up, and a bushing with the tapered end facing up. We'll go through the sway bar, install another bushing, then install the washer and the nut and tighten your new hardware down. You'll want a 17mm wrench on the nut and a 16mm socket and ratchet on the bolt end. Just tighten that up until it compresses the bushings so you know that everything's nice and tight and there's no slop in there to make any noise when you go over bumps. Once that's down tight, you can lower the weight off of the screw jack or floor jack.
Reinstall the wheel and tire onto your hub. It's easiest to put a lug nut inside of the 19mm socket to start it onto the studs. Get all five of these down as tight as you can by hand, and then we'll torque the wheel once there's some weight on it. Lower the vehicle back down and put partial weight onto the wheel and tire. This means that you may have your jack or lift under the vehicle. Get the tire to touch and let the vehicle come down some without allowing it completely off of the lift or jack. Torque your lug nuts to 100 foot-pounds in a cross pattern.
Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.
Tools used
Hi, I'm Mike from 1AAuto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years! We're dedicated to delivering quality auto parts, expert customer service, and fast and free shipping, all backed by our 100% satisfaction guarantee. We've created thousands of videos to help you install our parts with confidence. That saves you time and money, so visit us at 1AAuto.com, your trusted source for quality auto parts.
In this video, we're going to show you how to replace the front upper control arm. This is a 2006 Ford Explorer. It’s basically the same for 2006 to 2010. We show you on the passenger side, but the driver's side is the same procedure.
Please click Subscribe to see all our other videos for Explorer, as well as other Fords and other makes and models. To get the part in this video, click the link down in the description and go to 1AAuto.com for thousands of parts for all your needs.
Use your lug wrench or a 19mm socket with a big ratchet or breaker bar, and loosen your lug nuts while the vehicle is on the ground. We’re using a lift, but a jack and jack stands can be used as well. Remove the lug nuts the rest of the way, and then remove your wheel and tire.
With the vehicle supported on jack stands, or on the lift, you want to just put a floor jack underneath and raise up the suspension just to take a little bit of the load off. You need an 18mm and you need a deeper socket to clear the whole stud. Use a nice big breaker bar for some extra leverage and pull. Mine's coming apart pretty easy. Once it gets easy, just go with a wrench, and you want to make sure that this stud isn't spinning. Usually it's not. Leave the nut in place here and use a ball joint fork and a large hammer to separate the ball joint from the steering knuckle.
We're going to spray the ends of the bolts that are at the top of the control arm with rust penetrant. These two bolts are 18mm. The nuts should have a tab that locks into the control arm, so you don't have to hold the nut side. Nice big breaker bar, 18 mm socket on the front one fits in nicely. You can loosen it up. On this side, we'll use a 3/8 because it's just a little smaller. Let’s get in there. The only problem is, it doesn't give us as much leverage. You can see the nut spinning around right now, but in a moment it's going to get caught on the control arm and it'll come apart. If need be, you can use a piece of pipe, put over your ratchet. Just be careful not to overload the ratchet, and apply pressure gently for more leverage. Remove the bolts, just make sure that the nuts don't fall down too far, like that.
Then the bottom of this is an 8mm. The wrench fits on, so if you need to you can hold it. Remove the nut, and once it gets to a certain point, you may have to lock onto the stud with some slip-jaw pliers. Hold it there to remove it the rest of the way. Take the nut out, and lift this up and out. Have a bungee cord ready, put it around to hold the knuckle in place, and then you can pull your broken control arm out.
On the left, you can see the original part out of our 2006 Ford Explorer. On the right, the new part from 1AAuto.com. It's going to install and function just the same as the original. The only differences are very minor and cosmetic. The beauty of these is that they come with the ball joint, so either if your ball joint is bad or your bushings are worn out, installation of a new control arm from 1A Auto is going to fix your problem.
New control arm from 1A Auto, I'm just going to take the new locking nut off. I have one of our bolts ready. Slide it into place, hold the end and through just for now to hold it in place. Same thing down here. Make sure you get your bolts in first. Then our caged nuts in place. Start the bolts on. With those in place, carefully take off your bungee, or whatever's holding the spindle. Just put that down in for now and start the nut. Now, we're going to tighten up for the bolts. We'll tighten them up enough so that the control arm can still move. Once you get it to a certain point, you can push it in and you can see where your washer use to be, so we'll just move right to there and we'll tighten up preliminarily.
This will give you a preliminary alignment, and we do suggest that you get your vehicle realigned after you complete the repair. Once you've done the rear, do the same thing for the front. Before we put the knuckle together, or torque anything, we're going to raise the suspension up to its ride position. So, there should be no weight on your jack stand, or a little bit of space between your jack stand and your frame, and then that usually holds the stud pretty well here. We'll tighten this up.
Now we'll torque our two bolts to 111 foot-pounds. Do a final check and make sure they're lined up where they were originally if it's for a preliminary alignment. Again, torque them to 111 foot-pounds. Tighten this nut to 41 foot-pounds. After everything's tightened up, let your jack down. Again, we do recommend a front wheel alignment after this repair.
Reinstall your wheel and tire. Start all your lug nuts by hand first; make sure they don't cross-thread. Use your lug wrench, socket and ratchet, or whatever and tighten them up preliminarily. Lower the vehicle onto the ground. Tighten your lug nuts to 100 foot pounds using a star pattern to tighten them.
Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.
Tools used
Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years. We're dedicated to delivering quality auto parts, expert customer service, fast and free shipping, all backed by our 100% satisfaction guarantee. Visit us at 1AAuto.com, your trusted source for quality auto parts.
In this video, we're going to be working with our 2006 Ford Explorer. We're going to show you how to remove and replace your vehicle's outer tie rod. We're doing this on the passenger side, but the procedure is the same on the driver side. If you like this video, please click Subscribe. We have a ton more information on this and many other vehicles. If you need this part for your truck, you can follow the link down in the description over to 1AAuto.com. Here are the items you'll need for this repair. Here are the items you'll need for this repair.
Using a 19mm socket and a breaker bar, loosen the lug nuts on your tire. Raise and support your vehicle. We're doing this on a lift to make it easier to show you what's going on, but this job can be done at home on a jack and jack stands. Finish removing your lug nuts. You should be able to do this by hand at this point but you can use a ratchet if you need to. You can then remove your wheel and tire.
It may be a good idea to apply some penetrating oil to whatever parts you're going to be working with. Remove the 21mm jam nut with a 21mm wrench. You really only need to crack that loose.
Remove the 19mm nut from the bottom of the tie rod end at the knuckle. We'll do this with the 19mm socket and ratchet. In order to save our tie rod end and not damage it in the removal process, we're going to use a hammer and hit the side of the knuckle right here to oblong the hole for a second and pop the actual tie rod end out. Be sure to wear proper safety equipment when doing this. Remove the tie rod end. Count the number of revolutions it takes to remove it, so we can install our new one the same way. That looks like 20 for us.
Using a pair of locking jaw pliers, clamp on to the inner tie rod and just brace it against the lower control arm. Mark one side of the nut, so you can count the number of rotations to remove that as well: 28-1/2.
Here we have our old part that we removed from our vehicle and our new part from 1AAuto.com. As you can see there are some minor differences in the size of the piece, but the threads on the inside are the same and we have the same stud and tapered end on the opposite side. If your old outer tie rod has play on the end, this ball socket can get a little bit of slop in it and create some steering and alignment issues. This new part from 1A Auto will go in direct fit just like your original equipment and fix you up right.
I'm just going to put some anti-seize lubricant on the inside of this to make sure that it's always easy to adjust, and we'll do the same thing to the jam nut. Now, our new outer tie rod is just a little bit shorter on the actual female thread piece than our original one was, so I'm just going to spin the jam nut on, and then we'll apply some more anti-seize to the threads. Now, although the actual length on the female threads here is smaller, we're going to go ahead and install it 20 turns just like we did with the part that came off: 1, 2, 3, and your numbers may be different than this. You do just want to go the same amount of rotations. All right. Put back the jam nut until it just touches the end of our outer tie rod.
Then, we reinstall it into the knuckle. Install the new nut included with your new outer tie rod. We'll tighten that down with a 22mm socket and ratchet. Torque the nut to 52 foot-pounds.
Now, when we were knocking the outer tie rod end out of the knuckle, kind of folded the backing plate here. While it's not quite touching our rotor, it's a pretty common issue. You can just take a little pair of pliers and just tweak it until it's just about the same shape as it was. You can see there's some wrinkles and stuff that have happened over the years on it anyway, but just taking that extra second to pull it away is going to keep you from getting annoying noises that can cause you frustration after you've already made your repair.
Reinstall the wheel and tire onto your hub. It's easiest to put a lug nut inside of the 19mm socket to start it onto the studs. Get all five of these down as tight as you can by hand, and then we'll torque the wheel once there's some weight on it. Lower the vehicle back down and put partial weight onto the wheel and tire. This means that you may have your jack or lift under the vehicle. Get the tire to touch and let the vehicle come down some without allowing it completely off of the lift or jack. Torque your lug nuts to 100 foot-pounds in a cross pattern.
Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.
Tools used
Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years. We're dedicated to delivering quality auto parts, expert customer service, fast and free shipping, all backed by our 100% satisfaction guarantee. Visit us at 1AAuto.com, your trusted source for quality auto parts.
In this video, we're going to be working with our 2006 Ford Explorer. We're going to show you how to remove and replace your vehicle's inner tie rod. We are doing this on the passenger side but the procedure is the same on the driver side. If you like this video, please click subscribe. We have a ton more information on this and many other vehicles. If you need this part for your truck, you can follow the link down into the description over to 1aauto.com. Here are the items you'll need for this repair.
Using a 19mm socket and a breaker bar, loosen the lug nuts on your tire. Raise and support your vehicle. We're doing this on a lift to make it easier to show you what's going on, but this job can be done at home on a jack and jack stands. Finish removing your lug nuts. You should be able to do this by hand at this point but you can use a ratchet if you need to. You can then remove your wheel and tire.
It may be a good idea to apply some penetrating oil to whatever parts you're going to be working with. Remove the 21mm jam nut with a 21mm wrench. You really only need to crack that loose.
Remove the 19mm nut from the bottom of the tie rod end at the knuckle. We'll do this with the 19mm socket and ratchet. In order to save our tie rod end and not damage it in the removal process, we're going to use a hammer and hit the side of the knuckle right here to oblong the hole for a second and pop the actual tie rod end out. Be sure to wear proper safety equipment when doing this. Remove the tie rod end. Count the number of revolutions it takes to remove it, so we can install our new one the same way. That looks like 20 for us.
Using a pair of locking jaw pliers, clamp on to the inner tie rod and just brace it against the lower control arm. Mark one side of the nut, so you can count the number of rotations to remove that as well: 28-1/2.
Compress the clamp on the end of the inner tie rod boot. Do this with a variety of different pliers. Locate the crimped portion of the clamp on the inside edge of your tie rod boot. These could be in different locations on any vehicle as far as the clock position around the boot. Then normally, you can just cut these off with a pair of side cutters, but because ours is in a tight spot, I'm going to spread it with a tapered punch and wait for it to break. Remove the inner tie rod boot.
Now you can rent or buy an inner tie rod tool to do these. However, they're usually not on really, really tight, so if you have a pipe wrench, a good quality adjustable, or a pair of groove jaw pliers, you should just be able to get on there and break it loose with those. Now these ones, unlike our outer tire rod, bottom out. Once you break them loose, you can just remove them because the new one just goes on all the way.
Here we have our old inner tie rod that we removed from our vehicle and our new part from 1AAuto.com. As you can see, they're the exact same piece. They're the same length. We have the same hex for the inner tie rod, same length and size threads on both the end and the piece that goes into the actual steering rack. That little ball socket in there is what actually goes bad on these. You develop play in there and it will pop in and out and create some slop in your steering and improper alignment angles, where our new one is nice and tight. The old one just flops around. It comes with a nice new jam nut too. If your inner tie rod is worn and clunking or creating steering play or poor alignment angles, this new part from 1A Auto will go in direct fit just like your original equipment and fix you up right.
There's some thread lubricant included with your part. Make sure you get that on there. Then we'll reinstall it into the steering rack. Install the pipe wrench on there and tighten down your new inner tie rod. Remove the jam nut from your new inner tie rod.
Install the boot. Make sure the inner portion of the steering rack boot is on. You may want something like a hooked pick or if you have a hose pick that's a little bit bigger, those are pretty good too. Now, this is the original style clamp that we're using here. All you do for this is loop it around. Then, you have all these little square holes here and three hooks on this end. You just wrap it around as tight as you can get it. Set those hooks in. You want to make sure you get all three of them in there. Then, using a pair of side cutters, if you have a pair like these, these work really well too. Just get on both sides of that clamp, pinch it down to compress it. You'll want to compress your clamp, slide it back on.
I'm just going to put some anti-seize lubricant on the inside of this to make sure that it's always easy to adjust, and we'll do the same thing to the jam nut. Now, our new outer tie rod is just a little bit shorter on the actual female thread piece than our original one was, so I'm just going to spin the jam nut on, and then we'll apply some more anti-seize to the threads. Now, although the actual length on the female threads here is smaller, we're going to go ahead and install it 20 turns just like we did with the part that came off: 1, 2, 3, and your numbers may be different than this. You do just want to go the same amount of rotations. All right. Put back the jam nut until it just touches the end of our outer tie rod.
Then, we reinstall it into the knuckle. Install the new nut included with your new outer tie rod. We'll tighten that down with a 22mm socket and ratchet. Torque the nut to 52 foot-pounds.
Now, when we were knocking the outer tie rod end out of the knuckle, kind of folded the backing plate here. While it's not quite touching our rotor, it's a pretty common issue. You can just take a little pair of pliers and just tweak it until it's just about the same shape as it was. You can see there's some wrinkles and stuff that have happened over the years on it anyway, but just taking that extra second to pull it away is going to keep you from getting annoying noises that can cause you frustration after you've already made your repair.
Reinstall the wheel and tire onto your hub. It's easiest to put a lug nut inside of the 19mm socket to start it onto the studs. Get all five of these down as tight as you can by hand, and then we'll torque the wheel once there's some weight on it. Lower the vehicle back down and put partial weight onto the wheel and tire. This means that you may have your jack or lift under the vehicle. Get the tire to touch and let the vehicle come down some without allowing it completely off of the lift or jack. Torque your lug nuts to 100 foot-pounds in a cross pattern.
Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.
