2010 Ford Explorer Front 10 Piece Steering & Suspension Kit DIY Solutions SUS03198

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet.

Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

In this video, we're going to show you how to replace the lower ball joint on this 2003 Mercury Mountaineer. We show you on the driver side, but the passenger side is the same procedure. It's the same part and similar process on these Mountaineers from '97 to 2010. The items you'll need for this are a new lower ball joint from 1AAuto.com; 15, 18, 19, 21, 24 and 30mm socket and ratchet; a piece of pipe for some leverage; pliers; snap-ring pliers; a flat-blade screwdriver; hammer; ball joint press; torque wrench; jack and jack stands, and locking pliers, depending on the condition of your sway bar link.

Start off by removing your hub cab and then remove these 19mm lug nuts. If you don't have air-powered tools, you want to loosen them up while the vehicle's on the ground, then jack up the vehicle and support it, and then loosen the lug nuts the rest of the way. Once you've removed those, you'll be able to pull it free.

Now, you want to break off the ends on the Cotter pin right here underneath your wheel knuckle and then you can either hammer it out with a punch or, if the Cotter pin is only sticking out on one side of the castle nut, you can actually just use your 24mm socket and ratchet to break it free. Then, just remove that nut and then put it back on just a few threads.

Remove the nut on the end of the axle and, obviously, if you have air-powered tools it's not a problem. You can have somebody hold the brakes and use a socket and breaker bar if you need to. You want to twist this nut back on until it's flush with the axle and just hammer it until you can see it move. Then come up here and just remove this 18mm nut. With that nut twisted on, again, just a few threads, hammer the wheel knuckle until it drops down. Then, using a 15mm socket and ratchet, you want to remove the nut at the top of your sway bar link. You can hold the bottom with a wrench if it's turning. You can see ours is turning and, in an ideal world, this would just loosen up and you could pull it down, but the top of ours just breaks off.

To help get it out, you want to jack up the other side of the vehicle, and this will lift the sway bar on this side, allowing you to get to the top of sway bar link easier. We'll just spray it with some penetrating oil. Then, using locking pliers, you want to hold onto it while twisting the nut on the bottom of the sway bar link. You'll notice that the plastic will start breaking away and that's fine. You just want to keep repeating the process until all the plastic is gone and you have better access to it. We'll fast-forward as Mike does this. When it gets to this point, you'll be able to remove it and slide it down and out. If it is jammed up, just use a hammer.

Now disconnect your tie rod end, so remove the Cotter pin from the tie rod and I break off the bent over section. I just break it off and then I'm able to pull out the rest of the pin. Then, a 19mm socket, ratchet and a breaker bar loosen it up. You want to take the nut all the way off and then just thread it back on a few threads. Then hit the steering knuckle with a hammer until it pops free. Remove the nut and take the tie rod off and set it aside. If the nut is still on the lower ball joint, hit with a hammer to break it free.

Now support your lower control arm. You can see I have jack stands underneath the frame in the front for both sides. Jack that up with a jack. Here again, make sure the axle is free. I'm not hitting that hard. You don't want to hit your axle too hard because you could damage the CV joints. I'm really just tapping it. Jack it up a little further and now just lift up on the steering knuckle and remove the nut from the lower ball joint. Now remove the nut at the top of the wheel knuckle and pull the upper control arm out of the knuckle.

Take the axle out. Then, you want to take the wheel knuckle and pull it off the stud on the lower ball joints. Just remove that nut the rest of the way. Put it back on there and then just pull the wheel knuckle down and off that stud while pulling your axle out at the same time. It can be a little difficult, but it will eventually go. It's a good idea to just keep it secured to the top of the upper control arm, so just put that nut back on halfway for now.

Using snap-ring pliers, remove the snap ring along the top of the ball joint. Once you get it about halfway, you can just use a flat blade screwdriver and pry it up the rest of the way. With the ball joint press, we've got a cup around the lower part of the ball joint and that there, with a hole through there, so just press the ball joint right down through. I'm just tightening the press and then I hit it with a hammer at the same time, and that just kind of helps to break the ball joint free.

On the left is the old ball joint; on the right is the new one from 1A Auto. They do look similar, but there's some slight differences. However, ours will fit exactly the same. Remove the nut from your new ball joint and then you want to just carefully pry this boot off. Then set up your ball joint press and push the ball joint back into place. Again here, I'm going to tighten it up and just use the hammer to shock it a little bit to help it work its way in.

Once it's all the way back in, just replace that boot and make sure it's on all the way. Take your snap ring and put the snap ring along the top and make sure it's all the way down. Now take your wheel knuckle and you can remove the nut at the top holding it to the upper control arm. Then you want to feed your axle through while putting it back on that stud for your ball joint. This can take some maneuvering, but it will go, and then when you get enough space in the lower ball joint, you want to just replace that nut so it will hold it in place there.

Now push your upper control arm back into the wheel knuckle and replace that nut. Take your outer tie rod and push it back down and into the wheel knuckle and replace that nut. Then you want to torque that to 50 foot-pounds.

Push your new Cotter pin through, or your old one if you managed to save it, then just bend the tabs in opposite directions. Torque the upper ball joint nut to 50 to 55 foot-pounds.

Now replace the axle nut. Tighten it preliminarily. Put a jack underneath your steering knuckle and this basically raises the knuckle onto the ball joint to hold the ball joint in place. You want to tighten that nut up to 70 to 75 foot-pounds, and then further if you need to, to get the Cotter pin through.

Now, you can lower the wheel knuckle and then twist in your grease fitting at the top of the ball joint. We actually end up putting in a 90-degree grease fitting so it's a little easier to grease, and just tighten it up with our 7mm wrench. Then, just top the ball joint off with some grease.

Now you want to replace your sway bar link and you could see that ours was badly destroyed, so we're going to use a new one. You just slide it up through and the order is washer, then bushing, then the lower control arm, then bushing, then washer, then that metal tube, and then another washer and another bushing. Then it should be the sway bar, but you can see that the sway bar is just a little bit too low, so if you jack up the other wheel, you can see the sway bar go up and now you can fit in that bushing. Push the sway bar link up through the sway bar and then do another bushing, then a washer and then the nut. Then just lower the other side and it will compress the sway bar link and then just tighten that up with your 15mm wrench and 15mm socket and ratchet. For your final tightening of the stabilizer link, you can see I've got the vehicle on the ground, and the jack's underneath holding the suspension up in its usual ride height, and then I want to tighten it up so that the bushings basically come out to the same spot as the washers, basically compress the bushings down.

We'll fast-forward as Mike replaces the wheel and then replaces those lug nuts and just tightens them up preliminarily. Then lower the vehicle and torque each of the lug nuts to 100 foot-pounds in a crossing pattern. Then torque this 30mm nut to 184 foot-pounds, and then just replace your hub cap.

We hope this video 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.

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet.

Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

In this video, we're going to show you how to replace the front sway bar link on this 2003 Mercury Mountaineer, same as any 2002 to 2005 Mountaineer, as well as Explorer. Our front passenger side is broken, so we show you how to get it out and replace it with a new one from 1A Auto. You'll need new sway bar link from 1AAuto.com, 16mm and 19mm socket and ratchet, a piece of pipe for some leverage, jack and jack stands and a torque wrench.

You'll want to remove your center cap. If you don't have the benefit of air tools, then loosen your lug nuts with the vehicle on the ground. Then raise both front wheels and support the car with jack stands and then remove the lug nuts and wheel the rest of the way. Now you can pull the wheel free.

This is the driver side, which is actually still together, so you would, if you're removing one that was still together, put a 15mm socket and ratchet on top and a 16mm wrench on the bottom, remove that top nut and then go from there. On ours, it's broken so I'm just filling, basically, the cavity with penetrating oil. This is pretty typical: it breaks off up top here and you saw where you just filled it up with penetrating oil and now we're just messing around with it. We locked some locking pliers onto it. That penetrating oil really helped the bolt start up and we've basically broken the plastic here. Now this plastic tube will slide off.

We're just going to use a hammer and chisel to remove the rest of the plastic. This, of course, is the worst case scenario, you just want to remove the plastic, you can use some locking pliers and then just remove the nut on the bottom or at least loosen it up as much as you can. Then just hammer this down and out.

Before installing it, just jack up the other side, just slightly. Now replace your sway link and the order it should go in is: washer, bushing, control arm, then bushing, washer, the tube, and another washer, and then the bushing, and then your sway bar, then another bushing, another washer, and then the nut. You just want to tighten that nut preliminarily,and then release the jack.

To tighten up the link, what you want to do is have the car back down on the ground, and now I have a jack supporting just the front suspension so that basically everything is level and the suspension is in its correct ride height. Then tighten up the link by holding the wrench on top and then turning the bottom. Tighten it up so that the bushings are all squeezed to about the diameter of the washers.

Replace your wheel, then replace all the lug nuts and tighten them preliminarily. Then you'd want to lower the vehicle and tighten them the rest of the way, then torque each of these in a crossing pattern to 100 foot-pounds. Now replace your hubcap. Just line it up and hit it back into place.

We hope this video 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.

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.

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 sway bar link in the front. If you like this video, please click subscribe. We have a ton more information on this and many other vehicles. If you need these parts for your car, 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. Put a 17mm wrench on the nut on the top side 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 bushing 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.

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. You may need to use a screw jack or floor jack to jack up the control arm to get enough slack on that bolt to install the sway bar link. Then install the washer and a 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.

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.