2011 Mazda 3 i Rear 6 Piece Control Arm Set TRQ PSA65839

Oh, hey friends. It's Len here at 1A Auto. Today, I'm working on a 2011 Mazda 3, and I'm going to be replacing the upper control arm in the rear. It's going to be a very easy job. I want to be the one that shows you how to do it. If you need this or any other part, you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

Okay, friends, so here we are. We've got the vehicle partially supported off the ground, but the wheels still touching so it can't spin. We're going to use our 21 millimeter socket and we're going to loosen up all of these lug nuts. Okay. Just give them a crank or two. This is just to break them free, in case you're not using an air gun to do this job. If you are, well, you don't really have to worry about doing this part. Now that all five of these are loosened, we can go ahead up with the vehicle. We'll make sure that it's secured safely, so it can't shake around or fall off or anything like that. We'll move ahead to the next step.

All right, so now we're going to go ahead and fully remove these lug nuts. I'm going to take off three of them. The fourth one, I'm going to take all the way off, put it back on a few threads and then I'll remove the last one. There we are. Just going to put this one on a few threads like I said. That's just going to help keep this wheel from falling off, and potentially hurting me while I put all this stuff away. Hold the wheel, our lug nuts, we'll slide this out of the way. On to the next step.

All right, let's get our 17 up on there. There we are. I'm using a swivel socket. Let's get that up on there. I've got a nice long extension on there. I'm going to use this nice long ratchet. Oops. I'm going to remove this bolt, and we'll move ahead to the next step. Pretty sure it's all the way dethreaded. It's just being held in there now with the pressure, I'm having the other side on. I'm going to come right up top here, and I'm going to take out this 17 millimeter headed bolt. This also holds a bracket on for the flex hose here, okay. Once we take this off, we're just going to set that aside, and we'll get the bolt right out of there. Get this out of here. There's our outer bolt, has a little shank area on it right down near the end. We'll set this aside, and move onto the next step.

All right, now we're just going to stick our pry bar in here. See if we can get this arm to pry its way out. There we are. Okay. Got our brake flex hose here, so you want to make sure that you don't put too much pressure on that. Once we have this loose enough, theoretically, I should be able to put my hand up in here, pull out the other bolt. This bolt is also shanked towards the end here, so it feels as though they're about the same. We'll set this aside, get this arm out of here at the same time. Maybe. There we are. Let's move ahead to the next step.

Here we are, friends, a quick product comparison for you. Over here we have our rearward upper control arm out of our 2011 Mazda 3, and over here we have our brand new quality 1A Auto part. These two parts are built the exact same. They have the same exact shape and the same exact mounting holes. We'll line them up with each other so you can see, sitting right on top of each other. Everything lines up perfectly. We've got our two mounting holes here, mounting holes there, same curvature, super important. It's made out of quality steel right here, and it even comes with brand new bushings. With all that said, I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a great part to install into the vehicle, so I'm going to go ahead and do it. If you need this or any other part, you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

Okay, so now when we install this, we've got the part that comes down drastically, and then it comes off and it kind of levels out. It's kind of like the longer area here. The longer area is going to go towards the outward portion of the vehicle, or towards the wheel, okay? So it's going to be sitting inside the vehicle just like this. Let's go ahead and get this installed.

I'm going to try to come right in through up here. Try to get the top area in first. I've just going to get the hoses out of the way. There we are. Okay. I'm going to grab one of my bolts, bring my arm up and across the top here again. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's fun. Shooting blind here. Ooh, nice. That's a good noise. Okay. I've got a few good threads. Get my arm back out of here. Now, we're going to work on doing the upper portion. Getting this in here is going to be a little bit difficult, but we can do it. What I'm going to do, I'm going to take this little bracket off of here. Actually, I'll use it. I'll just keep it right out of the way, just like that. Why not? Just give this a couple loving bonks, see if I can get it down in there. Okay. All right. This in here. Get our bolt through. There we are. 17, let's go ahead and snug this right down. Okay. It's bottomed out, tight. We'll move ahead to the next step.

All right, so now we're going to go ahead and tighten up the upper bolt for the upper control arm in the rear here. 17 millimeter, got a universal, or I guess a wobble socket on there. Universal socket 17. I'm just going to go ahead and snug it right up here. There we are. Okay. It's bottomed out. There were are, nice and tight. Let's get our tool out of here. All right, next step. Okay, so now it's time to get the wheel up onto the vehicle. Instead of going in front of it and trying to lift and potentially hurting our back, you just come around the side of it, roll it right up your leg, and use your ab muscles to lift it up. There we are. Hold your wheel. Make sure it can't go anywhere. There we are. Our next step is going to be to bottom these out and then we'll bring it down completely and torque them down.

Okay, so now that we have all the lug nuts started on here, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to bottom them out. When I go to bottom them out, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go in a star pattern. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, okay? Basically, crisscross pattern, and that's to ensure I'm not going to go around in a circle this way, the wheel is not going to get kinked on just like this, and I think everything's nice and tight, you drive it down the road, the wheel's going like this. Next thing you know, you're breaking studs, your wheel comes off, God knows what could happen. Let's avoid that. Let's go crisscross star pattern. Okay. I'm not making them very tight, I just wanted to bottom them out. Now I'm going to go ahead and torque them down.

Okay, so here we go. We're going to go ahead and torque these down. We're going to make the same star pattern in a crisscross manner. 21 millimeter, 85 foot-pounds. I could have probably brought it down another inch. Okay. Just to be sure we torqued them all, let's just hit them again. Cool. Easy peasy.

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