Replaces
Part Details
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Tools used
Hi. I'm Mike from 1AAuto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years!
Use a large pry bar or a flat-bladed screwdriver to remove the wheel cover. Just kind of slide it between the wheel and the plastic and pop it off. These lug nuts are a 21mm socket. I’m going to use that and a breaker bar to loosen them while the vehicle's on the ground. Raise and support the vehicle. We're using a two post lift, but you can use a jack and jack stands. The lug nuts are loose, so you can take the socket and finish removing them. I’m just going to hold onto the wheel. When I take the last lug nut off it's going to be loose. I don't want to drop it. If you drop the lug nut that's okay; you just don't want the wheel to fall.
The ball joint is bolted to the lower control arm and has two nuts and studs and one single bolt, and of course the ball joint goes through the knuckle. We're going to spray some rust penetrant on here before we try to remove these. While this is mostly together, I just want to loosen these three 17mm – well, there are two 17mm nuts and one 17mm bolt. I’m going to use a 17mm socket and a large breaker bar to get these free.
Now I want to remove this cotter pin that's up here. So we take some needle nose pliers, bend it up, get them straight, and wiggle it back and forth, push it back out of the castle nut. Then take some side cutters, and I think what I'm going to do is just cut these off because they're real, real rusty. I’ll fold them as flat as I can and push them together. Take a punch and a hammer. The punch typically fits through the ball joint hole once it's opened up. And just do my best to pop that back out the other way.
This is 19mm. I'm going to put the box wrench on here and try to just break whatever's left of the cotter pin by turning the nut off. It's pretty stiff so I'm going to hit it with a mallet. Put some more rust penetrant on there. Just keep turning it off. Normally you'd try to pull that cotter pin out, but it was so rusty we had to break it. Then you’ve got to be careful you don't get the box wrench part of there stuck in here. I'm going to turn this on just a few turns. Just work it down and then I can slide the box wrench out. Because now I've got it free, I'm going to switch to the open end, and luckily the ball joint is stuck in the taper of the knuckle so it's not spinning as I'm trying to remove it. If the ball joint started to turn inside of the knuckle into the taper, it was just turning with the nut, you can try to put a floor jack up in here and put pressure onto the ball joint to try to hold it tight, and that's really about all the options you have.
Use the open end. So if this happens, and the CV axle is in the way, you don't have to take the CV axle out. I'm going to thread this back down because I know it'll come free. Get back down until just enough room there. If you don't have a ball joint removal tool or a separator tool, you can use a metal sledge hammer, a small one. You want to hit right here on the knuckle. Be very careful because you can break the knuckle this way, but you can give it a couple good strong whacks. Yeah. See, I don't like doing that because you have to hit it really, really hard, and I'm always worried that we're going to break a knuckle that way. So, since I've got a ball joint separating tool, I'm going to use that instead.
I think it's going to be easier for me to get in here if I remove these fully. Just pull this control arm down. Pull that down out of the way. It gives me a lot more space to work. So I'm having trouble getting the ball joint tool in here because it's super tight, and doesn't want to fit. The nut can't quite come off because the axle is in the way. I've put a couple little dents in the knuckle from trying to hit it with the mallet, so I don't want to keep doing that. I've kind of decided that if I took a pry bar and just very carefully pry it against the CV axle and pry it down, I could actually get it to pop out of the knuckle. It's not the most ideal method, but it worked. The ball joint will just come right out of here. If the shield is in the way, that's fine. Just put our pry bar in here, just pry the dust shield back, and pull the ball joint out.
Here's the old ball joint from our vehicle. You can see where the cotter pin broke off. It's still inside the little cotter pin hole. Here's a brand new one from 1AAuto.com, the same exact style. It comes with two new locking nuts for the studs, and a new bolt to go underneath. It also comes with a new castle nut, and a brand new cotter pin. This should fit right in and work great in your vehicle.
I’ve just got to wipe down all the extra grease that squeezed out of the old ball joint while I was trying to remove it, and slide our new ball joint up into place. You just need to pry the dust shield back a little bit. It's going to be squished right up in there. Get the nut caught.
Put this down and under. Just catch these two lower lock nuts so it doesn't pop out. Pull this down so it's flush and install the bolt.
We'll take a 19mm wrench, tighten this down. I’m going to switch to the longer wrench. You just want to make this nice and tight as possible. That feels pretty tight. I also want to make sure -- a we'll go a quarter turn more just to line up the hole with the castle nut. Take some pliers, bend this one up and over. Cotter pin is locked in there, it's not going to come out.
Snug down the 17mm bolt. Nuts on the replacement ball joint are 19mm. Snug these down. They have a nylon locking portion to them. Torque these lower nuts and this bolt to 55 foot-pounds. These are the 19s. Switch sockets. The ball joint is replaced.
Reinstall our wheel. It's important to note, these lug nuts have a taper. The taper meets the wheel, matches the inside of the wheel. Don't install them with the flat side like this; that is incorrect. Install them with the taper to the wheel. It helps locate the wheel on the lug nut side. I'm just using the socket and ratchet to bring these down snug before I put the car on the ground. Torque the lug nuts to 76 foot-pounds, going in a cross pattern.
Reinstall the hub cap. You're going to line up the opening for the valve stem with the valve stem on the wheel. Just push it in place.
Before we start the car, just going to gently press the brake pedal down; not all the way to the floor, maybe about a quarter of the way, and just pump it. This will bring the brake caliper piston out to meet the pads because we compressed it, and you'll start to feel it get more solid as it pumps up
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!
Use a large pry bar or a flat bladed screw driver to remove the wheel cover. Just kind of slide it between the wheel and the plastic and pop it off. These lug nuts are a 21 millimeter socket. I'm going to use that and a breaker bar to loosen them while the vehicle's on the ground. Raise this part of the vehicle. We're using a two post lift, but you can use a jack and jack stands. The lug nuts are loose. I’m going to take my socket and finish removing them. I’m just going to hold onto the wheel and take the last lug nut off. It's going to be loose. You don't want to drop it. You can drop the lug nut. That's okay. You just don't want the wheel to fall.
I’m going to disconnect the sway bar link from the strut. Going to spray some rust penetrant on this upper sway bar mount. Use a wire brush to clean off some of the rusty bits. These can be difficult to take off, they get rusty and then the ball joint spins. It does have a hex spot here to put in a six millimeter hex drive. A lot of times that strips almost instantly as soon as you try to break it free ad you end up having to put vice grips behind to grab onto the ball joint, because there's no point here for a wrench. We’re going to do our best to get this one off without having to cut it off.
So this is 17 millimeter nut. Try to break it free first. See, it's turning, it's turning the whole ball joint with it. It's really tight. I’m trying to clean out any rust and dirt that's in this hex drive so I can get the hex drive to sit as far possible inside here, so it doesn't strip. Use some brake parts cleaner, I've sprayed some oil in there and I've been working the hex drive in to try to clean it out. I can see it's going in a little deeper, trying to get this sit as best I can. That's as far as it will go. Spray some more rust penetrant on there. I'm going to try to counter hold this hex drive while I free it with the 17 millimeter boxed wrench. We'll see how this goes. Sometimes you have to brace that against like the strut ad these just have so much – see, it's moving. That's good. It's really tight, though, so I'm just going to put that there. I'm going to spray some more rust penetrant.
These are typically self-locking nuts, so they're a little bit, they're not perfectly round. They're kind of oblong and that can make removing them difficult and also the rust gets gummed up in the threads. So I'm trying to spin this on and off to try to work the rust penetrant into the threads. So as I kind of expected, working these back and forth this hex drive they basically always strip. It's nearly impossible to remove them without these stripping, no matter what you do. So the next step I'm going to get some vice grips and try to hold the ball joint back here and use a 17 millimeter socket and ratchet and continue to remove this nut.
I’m going to try to slide these locking pliers behind the ball joint on the sway bar link. I’ve got a 17 millimeter deep socket on this longer ratchet, going to try to remove these. It feels like it's turning. One thing to mention if you're going to have to remove sway bar links for any reason or think you're going to have to remove them for any reason, you should have new ones on hand. They're almost a one-time use part.
If you're as lucky as us, you'll have to resort to power tools or a hacksaw to cut these sway bar links free. I'll do my best to avoid the strut, I don't want to damage that. I just want to kind of cut on the – going to try to find the narrowest part of the ball joint and the sway bar link. I think I'm on there.
I've actually gone in here. Because these sway bar links get seized on here so easily, I went in and cut the boot away, the rubber boot. So that I can get locking pliers in here to get a better grip on it and it's kind of working by holding it. I'm able to turn the nut out. Worst case if I get loose enough and it just keeps spinning, then I will take a saw and cut it right here. But I'm going to keep trying it right now with the locking pliers. Got it.
Here are our old sway bar links from our vehicle. You can see where I had to cut them. I was able to finally get this one out, but still, these have been destroyed by trying to remove them and you can see they're kind of rounded here. There's no real way to counter hold them to remove the bolts. They are supposed to have a hex drive in here. That strips out pretty quickly when you're trying to remove them.
Here's a brand new sway bar link this is from 1AAuto.com. These actually have a six-point on them so you can put a wrench on here and tighten them down and it's not going to spin on you and when you want to remove them to do other services, you can put your wrench over here and spin this off without destroying the ball joint and the sway bar link. So this should fit great and work great in your vehicle.
Put these up. Get this one up top. You can bend these around. Slide it through. These nuts are locking nuts, so the hole is not perfectly round. It's kind of oblong. So when this starts to tighten it will lock and it won't want to back off.
These nuts are 18 millimeter get this one set up here. The counter hold on the back is 18 millimeters. I'm going to use a deep socket 18 millimeter in the front. Get these snugged down and I'll come back and torque them. Torque for these sway bar links is 55 foot-pounds, and repeat it on the other nut.
Reinstall our wheel. It’s important to note these lug nuts have a taper. Taper meets the wheel and matches the inside of the wheel. Don't install them on the flat side like this; that is incorrect. Install them with the taper to the wheel. It helps locate the wheel on the lug nut stud. I'm just using the socket and ratchet to bring these down snug before I put the car on the ground. Torque the lug nuts to 76 foot-pounds, going in a cross pattern. Reinstall the hub cap. You’ve got to line up the opening for the valve stem with the valve stem on the wheel. Just push it in place.
Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.
1ASFK03130
