1997 GMC K3500 Truck Front Driver Side Sway Bar Link MOOG K700539

Take the center cap off, we'll just use a straight blade screwdriver. Just get behind here. Slide it off. The lug nuts off. Use a 22-millimeter socket. Now take the wheel off. You need some pliers on the top of the link. Right here. Just watch out for the brake hose. And then underneath, I'm going to use a 14-millimeter socket. There we go. Cut the top off. And slide the bolt straight through like that. Can use a large pry bar. Just pry up. Just take this piece out. Just be careful, don't pry on the steering. I was prying through the frame in the back there. All right. The new link, I'm just going to take this top piece off, set it aside, and you're going to need to take these pieces off as well. And slide this lower part through and then put the bushing, the washer in the same...pretty much the same how it came out. Then up top. Put the bushing, and the washer, and the nut.

Use a 14-millimeter wrench on the nut and a 14-millimeter socket on the bottom. Tighten this up. Then we're going to torque this nut to 89-inch-pounds. That's good. Just make sure the top of this bolt is not rubbing on the brake line. And if it is, then you could always trim the top of the bolt or you can always invert it and have the bolt going straight down.

And 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.

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.

Safely raise and support your vehicle on the frame so your suspension can hang. Now that we've safely raised the vehicle, let's remove this by using a small pry bar right in this little slot.

Now you can see your 22-millimeter lug nuts; remove those.

And now we'll just do the same thing to the other side. Let's get this little plastic cover out of here. To get out the sway bar links, more than likely, you're gonna have to drop your sway bar. To do that, I would spray right inside this hole right here, try to spray the top area of that bolt, and then from the other side, spray this side as well. While you're at it, why don't you do the other side of the vehicle at the same time?
To get this one out, obviously, it's going to be a little bit difficult. You have minimal room here. Go and try to use some sort of pivoting extension or whatever you might have to get up in there. You could also use a 10-millimeter wrench if you have all day.

Let's do the same to the other side. I'm just gonna use a swivel socket to come through this hole. I want to try to find the bolt under there. I'm gonna hold that and then I'm gonna remove the nut on the top.

Okay, so that one broke. So now we're just gonna get the bar off of here. We can move this, try to get this separated real quick.
So now we have the sheath. This is a metal sheath that goes over this metal part of the bolt. Odds are that's gonna be completely rotted together. The best thing to do here would be to cut it. If you were to look right down along here, you can see exactly what I'm talking about. They left plenty of room for moisture to get in there. Let's carefully heat up the area. You obviously want to be careful for any rubber such as your axle boot, or even your ABS wire.

Now we have that nice and warm, let's go ahead and hit it was some penetrant spray. Let's clear the area, let that dissipate for a minute.

Let's get the rest of this off of there.
It doesn't look like the bushing wants to be coming out at the same time here. Get this out here, get that out of there.

Now when you're replacing the sway bar links or just the bushings, you want to obviously do those as a pair and when they're apart is the best time to do it. So now when we're getting ready to put this on, it's important to make sure you have the smaller bushing on the bottom side, that's going to make it much easier to get up through the hole in the bottom of the control arm.

Get that and the bushing right up in there. Now we're gonna go with the other bushing that has the washer on it like that. Slide it down, get your shank, slide that on there, you've got your other washer, a little thing on there. Slide that like that. This is gonna go through the bar. Now we'll grab our bushing with the washer, slide that right on there and get our locking nut, make sure you put that on as well, obviously.

Now we're gonna do the same to the other side and then we'll jump into putting back on the bushings. Now we're gonna take our 13-millimeter wrench, come through the bottom of that control arm right through the hole and try to hold the bolt. And we'll come up here with our socket and we're gonna snug this up and pay attention to the bushings for how much they try to squish down.

I'm just going to analyze these bushings real quick. What you want to look for is to make sure that they're actually touching up against the bar. They have no room for movement, and you also want to make sure that they're not necessarily squished down like a pancake. If you've done that, you're probably going to damage the bushing. All you want it to be is enough so it touches here, here, here, and then if you could see in there, of course it's touching as well. We'll do the same to the other side. Let's start all of our bolts in here that hold the sway bar bushings in.

We're gonna snug these right up. All right, make sure those are nice and tight and then do the same to the other side of the vehicle.

Time to get the wheel up on here. Start on one of those lug nuts. Now we're just gonna start on all the lug nuts. We'll bottom them out, and then we'll torque them to 120 foot-pounds.Torque these to 120 foot-pounds. It's torqued. We'll get our cover on here. Awesome. And now we'll just do the same thing to the other side.

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the internet.
Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing or maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20-plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts, installed correctly that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

In this video, we're going to replace the sway bar links in this 2002 GMC 2500HD, basically the same as most '88 to '06 GM pickups, SUVs, vans; also the same as a couple of Ford applications. Tools you'll need are a jack and jack stands for some vehicles, 14 mm socket and ratchet or whatever is correct for your link, they could be different depending on application, an adjustable wrench, and some penetrating oil.

Your stabilizer link is right up underneath. This big bar here is your stabilizer bar, and then here is your control arm. It's connected by this, which is the stabilizer link right here. This can break. Also, these bushings, these rubber bushings can wear out, which will cause a rattling sometimes when you go over bumps. You have a good idea if it's the stabilizer link if, when you go around a turn, the rattling stops. I'm going to show you how to replace that.

On top, you're going to want to spray some penetrating fluid. This is a 14 mm bolt down here at the bottom. What you're going to want to do is put an adjustable wrench onto this side. This is an original link here, so the thing on top is kind of bolt-shaped. I've got that on there to hold it. Now I'm going to attempt to slowly unscrew it.

The bolt comes down, and that can come out. Then you can see, even though there's nothing too terribly wrong, you can see that this one is worn, right in here, so we'll replace it. On the original you can see this top nut has edges to it so you can get that wrench on there to hold it in place. We've gotten it out of there, but we still have this in place. Just pull that right out, like that. I'm going to take my new link and I'm going to put it up through. This bushing has the ridge up into the control arm. Then I'm going to take a bushing down and then a washer on top of that, then my spacer. Then I'm going to take a bushing and a washer, and now the step goes up into the sway bar. Then just push that.

In order to get this in, what I've done is this is a little jack. If you're doing this just on the ground, you can do the same thing. Put the jack in underneath the stabilizer bar here, lift it up, and create plenty of room to push that up through. Then you want to make sure these bushings all go right into the holes in the stabilizer bar, right there, and the control arm. This last bushing goes with the ridge down, then the washer on top. I'm going to put the jack right in underneath here, push this up in to get the nut on.

I've got this together and I've got the nut started on there. I'm going to replace the other side first before I tighten it up. I wouldn't take apart the other side here you can see, this is the one from the driver's side and this is the one from this side, so you can see this whole part was rough and it broke off. It's possible this link wasn't really doing anything anyways. This here that broke off of this one is stuck inside there. What I'm going to have to do is I'm going to have to actually cut this link with my Sawzall. I'm going to do that very carefully, because I don't want to contact the boot or anything else. I don't want to contact the CVs. I just want to cut through the link itself.

Now with the car on the ground, you want to tighten up the links. I'm just using an air ratchet. You can hand tools, obviously. Tighten up both sides and you're done.
We hope this 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.

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.