2012 GMC Savana 1500 Van All Wheel Drive Front 12 Piece Steering & Suspension Kit TRQ PSA60119

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.

So before you do this job, you wanna keep in mind that after you're done, you're gonna have to go to an alignment shop and have the vehicle aligned so you don't burn out your tires and have premature tire wear.

Now, I'm gonna remove the wheel. Use a 22-millimeter socket. Take off the lug nuts. Take the wheel off. I'm gonna take the sway bar link out. Now this link's been replaced before. If you had the OEM link, you're gonna need to use some pliers at the top of this. For this one, I'm going to use a 14-millimeter wrench and a 14-millimeter socket on the bottom. And just take this out. If it's still good, you can reuse it.

All right, I'm gonna take these axle bolts out. Before I take this out, I just wanna mark the flange just so when I put it back together, it goes together the same way it came apart. Just use some paint or a marker. Now, I'm gonna use a 15-millimeter socket to take these bolts out. Now I can separate this and just slide this down out of the way. Now, I'll take a 36-millimeter socket and take the axle nut off, and take this washer off as well. There we go. Now, if the axle is stuck in there, you're gonna wanna use a punch and a hammer and tap it out that way. If it's not stuck, then you can just grab the axle and just slide it out.

Now we need to take the torsion bar keyways out. When we take this bolt out, you can take a tape measure and just measure where the bolt was. So a little more than half an inch, almost three quarters of an inch right there, so you can put it back to where it was. Or you can put a line on your socket and just count the threads when you take it out.

I'm using a 18-millimeter socket. Now, next I need to take this bracket out, but because the keyway is putting pressure on it, I can't take it out. So you need a special tool like this specifically made for this. There's a little nub on the top. There's a hole in this bracket right here. You just slide this through here over the cross-member as you tighten the keyway up. Once there's an air gap on top of that, you can take that bracket out.

Just try to slide this out. Watch your fingers. Once you get that out, you can take the tool off. All right. Now, I'm gonna use a punch and a big hammer and just tap. You wanna tap the torsion bar straight forward. And when it starts moving, just be careful of the keyway because the keyway could just fall. If that doesn't work, I'm gonna use an air chisel and try to slide that forward. There we go. Starting to get movement. You can take a little rust penetrant and spray down the cam and you can also spray down the lower control arm.

There we go. All right. So that popped out. And there's the keyway. All right. So there's no tension from the torsion bar on the lower control arm, but I'm gonna take a screw jack and just support the lower control arm, just about that much. And then I'm gonna take the shock bolt out. Use a 21-millimeter socket and a 21-millimeter wrench.

I'm gonna take that bolt out. Now, I can lower the screw jack. Now, the upper control arm is eventually gonna get supported by that ear right there. So once we take the control arm out, the knuckle is gonna fall a little bit, but it'll be supported right there, or even by the tension on the upper control arm bushings. I'm gonna take a 24-millimeter socket and loosen up this nut. We don't have to take it off completely. You can leave a couple threads on there. And then we're gonna separate the ball joint from the knuckle.

All right. I'm gonna use a pickle fork to separate this. There is other tools you could use that actually grab on here and just push it through. Use whatever works for you. There we go. And now I'm gonna take the control arm bushing bolts out. I'm gonna use a 15/16 wrench or a 24-millimeter wrench on the nut and then use an 18-millimeter socket on the bolt.

And I'm not gonna take the bolt out yet. I'm gonna get the other one off first. Now, there is a washer. Also, take those washers off. Now, try to slide those bolts out. You can tap them out with a hammer and use a pry bar. Just pry this out. I'll just slide the torsion bar straight forward, and then we can slide it back and just slide it out. Now we're gonna take this nut off and slide the control arm up.

When you take the torsion bar out, you wanna keep in mind which direction it came out. And if you mark it with the...which end is the back and which end is the front. Just take the grease fitting, get the grease fitting started and take a 7-millimeter wrench and just snug it up. That's good. All right. Now we'll just put this in the same way it came out. Start with the ball joint and put the nut on. Now, I'll just slide the torsion bar back in position. Remember the back goes towards the back of the vehicle. Slide this through the front, and go through the crossmember over here, and towards the back of the vehicle. All right.

All right. Now, just line the control arm up. Just be careful, watch your fingers. You can use a pry bar if you have to. Get them between here and take the bolt. Slide the bolt in. Make sure you put those little washers on, and same with this one. Now we're gonna tighten up the lower ball joint nut. Snug that up first. And then we're gonna torque it. And then torque this nut to 74 foot pounds.

So now we wanna tighten these two bolts. Now, when you tighten these down because of the bushings there, you want this lower control arm as close to ride height as possible. So I'm gonna use a screw jack and raise this up to how it would be for ride height, as close as possible. Ideally, you wanna put this all back together and torque these bolts on the ground, but it's kind of hard to access these bolts while the vehicle is on the ground. So we'll do it now. That looks good. I'm just gonna snug these up first.

Now with my 15/16 wrench and 18-millimeter socket, I will torque these to 129 foot pounds. There we go. Now, I can lower this down. As I lower this down, I'll get the shock bolt, line that up. I'll snug this up first, then I'll torque the lower shock bolt to 59 foot pounds. That's good. Now I can lower the screw jack, put it out of the way. Now, we're gonna slide the axle back in the CV shaft, and just line this up with the mark that you made. That's good right there. And get these bolts started.

Now, I'm just gonna snug these up first. Now, I'm gonna torque these bolts to 58 foot pounds. And to prevent the axle from spinning, I can use a pry bar and just hold the lug nuts, go in between the lug nuts, and just go around one at a time. I made it all the way around them. Now I'll put the washer back on and then the nut. Snug this down first. Now you can lower the vehicle down to the ground, and just use a pry bar to prevent this from spinning, or you can just torque it like this, and torque this nut to 177 foot pounds.

All right. Now, you can always take a wire brush and just clean some of the rust out of the keyway and same with the torsion bar, and just slide the keyway back in position. And slide the torsion bar in, just like that. Try to get it as close as it was when you took it apart. That looks pretty good. And you can always compare it to the other side.

Now, we'll take the tool. Tighten this back up. All right, now, we'll tighten this up. I'm gonna take that bracket and slide it through. Now the round part goes on the bottom. Just keep your fingers out of there. That's good. And loosen up on the tool. Get the bolt, get the bolt started. And when you put this back in, you can always count the turns. Going back in, put it back where it was.

You wanna take your tape measure and just double check. A little bit looser than... I love that. That looks good. You can always check your ride height adjustment afterwards at the tires and adjust accordingly. Put the sway bar link back in. There we go. And get the nuts started on top. Pick my wrench, snug this up. And then we're gonna torque this to 89 inch pounds. Make sure you're on inch pounds, not on foot pounds.

And then reinstall the wheel and then put the lug nuts on. Now, I'm gonna torque these lug nuts to 140 foot pounds in a cross pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. I'll just go around again and double check.

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.

Take the center cap off, use a straight blade screwdriver. Use a 22-millimeter socket. Take the lug nuts off. Pull the wheel off. Now I'm gonna use a pole jack or a screw jack and just support the lower control arm right here. Just raise it up a little bit. I'm gonna take the sway bar link out. You can use a 14-millimeter wrench up top and 14-millimeter socket underneath. Loosen this up. And if you're gonna reuse this, just try to keep it all together the best you can. These bushings are gonna fall off. Here we go.

Now I'm gonna disconnect the lower shock bolt. Use a 21-millimeter wrench on the bolt side and 21-millimeter socket. Take the nut off, right there. And you might have to adjust the control arm to get the bolt out, just like that. I'm gonna use a 36-millimeter socket. Take this axle nut off and take the washer off as well. Just wanna make sure the axle is loose from the wheel bearing. Just take a punch, go to tap. That's loose, so that's good. Before we take this axle off, just mark it so that you put it back together, put it in the exact same location that you had it. Now use a 15-millimeter socket. Take these bolts out. All right. Just take a hammer, give it a tap and just separate this. Slide this down. You should be able to slide the axle right up.

We're gonna loosen up the tension on the torsion bar. We wanna take this keyway out. To take this bolt out, you want to put this back where it was when you go to put this back together. You may still have to adjust it, but at least you can get a baseline. So what you can do is just take a socket and mark it. And loosen this up. As you loosen it, just count your turns. All right. So the tension's completely off of the keyway. Now the bolt's just in this piece right here. So I'm just gonna take it out the rest of the way. I got about 14 or 15 turns out of it. That's good.

All right. So some of the tension's off that torsion bar. I'm just gonna take this screw jack, pull jack, loosen this up. I might need to put that back up, but for right now, just leave it down. Now we need to remove this adjuster bracket. You need this special tool to do this job. What you're gonna do is there's a hole on top here where this part of the tool is gonna go into that hole. And then this is gonna push up on the keyway. Right there. So we'll tighten that up. And once it's raised up just enough, then we can push that bracket out of the way. All right. And just be careful. And pull that out. Once you pull that out, we can loosen up on the tool. Lower the keyway. And remove the tool.

All right. I'm just gonna take some rust penetrant, soak this down. Let it soak for a little while, right there. All the tension's off of that. Also on the lower control arm, right there. And on the other side. I'm gonna take a punch and there's a hole right here on the backside and just use a hammer and just try to punch the torsion bar out. There we go. That pops up and this keyway slides right down like that. This bar can just hang out right here until we take those bolts out. But before we do that, we're gonna take the ball joints off. Just use a little rust penetrant. It's a little bit rusty. Take a 24-millimeter socket, remove this nut.

There's many different front-end tools you can try to use. There's some clamps that go around here and push up on the ball joint. You can take a hammer and try to break it free that way or take a pickle fork, which is what I'm gonna do. There we go. I'm gonna take a 15/16 wrench and put it on the nut right here and then use a 18-millimeter socket. Loosen this bolt up here. I'll leave the bolt in there. Just take the nut off first and then take this nut off as well, this bolt out. There is a washer on the end of those. Take the washer off. Now, just make sure you support these controls arms or just don't be underneath them when you take these bolts out. Take that bolt out. And take those bolts out. All right. And slide this up. And you can slide the arm off the torsion bar. Slide it out of your way.

Take this grease fitting and just thread it in place to the top part of the ball joint. Take a 7-millimeter wrench and just snug it up. All right. Take the control arm, slide it over the torsion bar, go all the way through. And I'll start by lining the ball joint up and then try to position the control arm. Yeah. And take that dead blow hammer, try to hammer it in place. And take the bolt, get that bolt started. Just use a pry bar and just try to line this up. And those are both good. Put the ball joint nut on. And we'll tighten this up. And use a torque wrench and torque this to 74 foot-pounds.

Now put the washer on the bolt that goes right there and then the nut, get the nut started. And same on this back one. And then I'm gonna raise this control arm up before I tighten these bolts and nuts down. You want this control arm to be as close to ride height as possible. What is advised is putting this whole thing back together, having it on the ground and when the ride height is level, then you torque these, but that's very hard to do, so we're gonna do the best we can right now. And we're gonna torque these to 129 foot-pounds.

All right. Just lower the screw jack and take the keyway. Slide it in position and slide the torsion bar back through just like that. All right. Take the tool, put it in position. And you can tighten it up. All right. That's good. And put this bracket in. And we can loosen up on the tool. And remove the tool and put the bolt in. And before we tighten this up, I'm actually gonna attach the shock bolt. All right. Now we'll just use a screw jack. Get that lined up, get a tap, and put the nut on, and then torque this to 59 foot-pounds.

All right. Now I'm just gonna lower the screw jack down. All right. Tale the CV shafts and line it up. And just make sure you line up your paint marks. Get the bolt started. And then I'm just gonna snug these up first. I'm gonna start on this side and then rotate it 180 degrees. Tighten this one up and then just go around, snug them all down. To prevent the axle from spinning, just put a pry bar in between here. And I can use a torque wrench and torque these bolts to 58 foot-pounds. Take the washer, put the washer on, put the nut on. I'm using a pry bar and go in between the lug nuts so it doesn't spin when you go to tighten this. And torque this to 177 foot-pounds.

All right. We're gonna take the link, get the link lined up. Slide that in underneath. And get the top pushing on. All right. Now we'll tighten this up. And then we can torque this to 89 inch-pounds. Good. And take a grease gun and just push it on the grease fitting. Just give it a couple pumps. It's a good idea to watch the boot. And once you see the boot moving, then that should be enough. Now we can tighten up this bolt for the height adjuster. Make sure you count how many turns when you tighten it back up. If you took it out 20 turns, put it back to 20 to get at least a baseline, and then you can adjust accordingly. Put the wheel back up. Put the lug nuts on. Now I'm gonna torque these lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds in a star pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again, double-check. Install the center cap.

Take the center cap off. Use a straight-blade screwdriver. Use a 22-millimeter socket. Take the lug nuts off. Pull the wheel off. These bolts are pretty rusty so I'm just going to use some rust penetrant and soak those before I start. Before we take this nut off, we just want to mark this cam right here. This is for the alignment. When you go to put this back together, you want to put this in the same location so at least it's close. You're still going to need to get an alignment done afterwards, but this will get it a little bit closer. I want to get this ABS wire out of the way, our wheel speed sensor wire. Disconnect the connector up here. Just push up on that tab, slide it out and use a trim tool. Just pull up on that retainer. You can do the same over here, and right here. Sometimes these ones break, just be careful. All right. So this piece is going to break so I'm just going to disconnect it right from the arm itself. And disconnect this right here. Sometimes you can use a screwdriver and just pop that out, or a needle-nose pliers also works. You just squeeze those together. I'm just going to put some rust penetrant on this bolt right here. Let that soak a little bit. We want to take that off next. Just remove this bracket. Use a 10-millimeter socket. Remove this bolt. It's probably going to break. Yup, it broke. Well, hopefully yours doesn't break. And slide that off.

All right. Now, we're going to take this nut off using an 18-millimeter wrench. Now I'm going to leave this nut on just a couple of threads, and then we're going to break this upper ball joint free from the knuckle. I'm going to use a pickle fork to break this free. Just slide it in, in between the ball joint and the knuckle and just give it a hit. There we go. Take the pickle fork out and just push down the upper control arm a little bit. You might need a pry bar. And take the nut off and you could slide it out. And just make sure that there's not too much tension on the brake line, brake hose. I'm going to take a 21-millimeter wrench, 21-millimeter socket. Now this is old and rusty so I just had to heat up that nut to break it loose. Normally you wouldn't have to do that. And loosen it up. That nut's pretty hot right now so I'm just going to let that cool down before I take that off. Take that nut off and see if you can pry this cam off. This is just the alignment cam. Just use a pry bar and a hammer. And just pry that off. All right. This cam bolt is stuck in there pretty good so I'm just going to use some more rust penetrant, soak it down for a while.

Here we go. All right. Get that out and do the same for the other side. All right. I'm just going to take this bracket out of the way. Just use a 13-millimeter socket and you can just slide it out of the way. Don't bend it too much. Here we go. And just use a pry bar and you can pry the arm out. And take the new control arm and just line it up. You can take a rubber mallet, or a dead-blow hammer to tap it in if you need to. And get the bolt started. And take this cam and the nut. Get the nut started. Now we tighten this up. Now we want to align that mark up. What you do is take your 21-millimeter wrench and just move the bolt on this side until that lines up. And you can snug that down. And we'll do the same for the other side. All right. Now, we're going to torque this nut to 140-foot-pounds. Do the same on the front one. Take this brake hose bracket and install that. Put the bolt back in and tighten that up. Get the nut off. Put that aside. Get this lined up with the upper knuckle. And I'll use a pry bar, just pry this down. Take the nut and get the nut started.

Now, I'm going to use a 19-millimeter ratchet wrench, while I'm using the pry bar to pry it down on the ball joint. Tighten this up. All right. Now, if you have the ability, just torque this with a torque wrench, you can torque this to 37-foot-pounds. Do the best you can. And if the stud starts spinning, you can use an allen key, that's a six-millimeter hex key. But if you use the pry bar and you just pry it down, you should be able to get that without having the stud spinning. Take this brake hose bracket and line that up. Put the nut on or the bolt in and snug it up. And take the wheel speed sensor wire and reconnect that. And then we have this holder or clip. Install that. Lock that in place. Reinstall this clip and connect the connector. And push the retainer. I'm just going to find the hole where it goes. There it is. And lock that in position. And take this fitting. Install that. Snug it up with a seven-millimeter wrench.

And take a grease gun and give it a couple pumps of grease. What you can do is look at the boot as you're greasing it, once you see the boot start to move, that's good enough. And put the wheel back up. Put the lug nuts on. Now I'm going to torque these lug nuts to 140-foot-pounds in any star pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again, double check. Install the center cap.