Replaces
Part Details
Our control arms are designed to be direct replacements for the original factory parts. They are 100% brand new and require no modifications for installation. No special tools are required because all of the bushings come pre-installed.
Our steering and suspension components are pre-greased and sealed for long life and do not require the extra maintenance typically required by greaseable versions.
Item Condition:
New
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WARNING: This product can expose you to chemicals including Lead and Lead Compounds, which are known to the State of California to cause cancer, and birth defects or other reproductive harm. For more information, go to www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.
Lifetime Warranty
This item is backed by our limited lifetime warranty. In the event that this item should fail due to manufacturing defects during intended use, we will replace the part free of charge. This warranty covers the cost of the part only.
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Tools used
Hey, everyone. It's Len down at 1A Auto. Today we're going to be working on a 2001 Lexus GS300. We're going to be doing the upper control arm. It's a very easy task and is something that anybody can do. I'm just going to show you one thing, and it's very important and easily missed. When you take off this ball joint nut right here, there's a little plastic cover. This right here is trash garbage. This is the boot, the important part, and the reason for this plastic is to protect that important part, which is the boot. Take this off, throw it right in the garbage.
All right, one of the first things that we're going to want to do is after we have the vehicle semi-supported off the ground, you want to make sure the wheel is still on the ground firmly. You take your 21-millimeter socket, and if you have a long ratchet, or a breaker bar, one, just a little bit. You don't want to go too far. As we take off this one last lug nut, you want to make sure you hold that wheel on. You don't want it to fall off, go bouncing off, hit you in the knee, hurt yourself. Safety is key. Let that down nice and easy.
One thing I wanted to mention first of all is you want to compare your part. Before you start taking anything apart, wasting any time, you want to compare it to the old part that you're going to be replacing. Here we have a quality 1A Auto part. We want to bring it up to the vehicle and just to make sure that it matches up. There is an offset to this, as you can see. It's not a perfect triangle. It is actually an offset. There's a longer angle here, shorter angle there. Compare that to your old one. Put it up close--as close as you can. It looks like it matches up. You got the longer arm in the front and the shorter area in the rear. Ball joint is where it's supposed to be. It looks like it should fit. Let's throw it in. Here at 1A Auto we focus on safety first, your safety, my safety, everyone's safety. That's why we try to install quality parts. We try to emphasize on safety, basically, so make sure you have safety goggles on.
Doing this upper control arm, something that we need to think about is what we do is going to cause a reaction. When we start taking out this control arm, we're going to start here. What's going to happen? This is going to come yanking down. It's going to put a lot of pressure on this right here. You know what this is? This is your ABS wire, super sensitive equipment. If this drops down, you yank this wire, give it a little stretch, you're going to have an ABS problem. You'll see a light on. You're going to say, "Len, you showed me something wrong." Think about what you're doing. See what the next action is going to be. First, we're going to remove this right here just to at least give it a little bit of slack for when this does drop down.
We're going to take out this bolt right here. It's a simple 10-millimeter socket to remove it with a ratchet or an air gun, whatever you've got, nice and loose. I did pre-spray everything that I knew that I was going to have to remove--very important. It's going to help you out in the long run. Remove this bolt--very easy. Look at how much slack we have now. Nothing is going to hurt that. I'm going to put this bolt someplace where I can remember it, and it won't get lost.
Next, what we're going to do is we're going to pull out this safety clip. What this does is it makes sure that this nut, for whatever reason, maybe it was under-torqued for some reason, or it just came loose, this clip is to make sure that the nut can't come all the way off, and then your ball joint and knuckle can't separate. This clip right here isn't just a regular cotter pin. It has a little clip on the side that you have to pull out. You pull that away from the nut, and then you can grab this with your angled pliers or angled cutters, whatever you have. Just give it a little yank. Usually, they come right out. This one is a fighter, which is fine. I like that. That pops right out. Here's what your clip looks like, and there's the little angle right there that I was mentioning. Pull that away from the nut.
Our next step is we're going to remove this nut right here. As you can tell, it's already starting to get a little bit wonky. Somebody tried using maybe a 12-point socket on this. The edges where they're supposed to be nice and pointed and cornered are rounded. This could cause an issue for you, trying to remove it. I don't anticipate it being an issue because what I have is a six-point socket. It has a lot more grip on nuts this style. If you have a 12-point nut on there, you'd use a 12-point socket. You have a six-point nut, use a six-point socket. Fairly easy, right? We're going to be using a 17-millimeter socket just like that. Put it on loosen. That's tightened. Give it a little yank and break it free.
I brought it down just a couple threads. I don't know if you can see that or not, but you don't need to come all the way off yet. The reason for that is because I'm going to take my big fabulous hammer. I'm going to whack this knuckle right here. What that's going to do is it's going to cause a little bit of vibration. What it should do fairly easily is break the ball joint free from the knuckle. Once that's free, I'll put away my big fabulous hammer, so I can have two hands. I'm going to put my hand on this. Hold it nice and firm. I'm going to take this nut completely off, and bring this down under a controlled motion. Here we go--big fabulous hammer time. Bing.
As you can see, it broke free. We got a little bit of gap between the boot and the knuckle, and there's no gap between the nut and the knuckle. Here's where the six-point, 17-millimeter socket and ratchet is going to come in. You're going to keep one hand on this. As soon as you get it down to the end, so you can have controlled motion of this knuckle. Very important. This nut is almost off, so I'm going to hold the knuckle. I can hold up the ratchet at the same time, if that's what you're into. We're just going to get this right off of here. Here we go. Last couple threads holding the knuckle firm. You can lift up on that ball joint. Separate the ball joint from the knuckle. Let this down slow. The reason for that is you want to make sure that you have control over it with this hose right here. As you can tell, the ABS wire that we did disconnect, very safe. Nothing happened to it, but if it was mounted, look at how close it would have been. That's pretty close. Anything can happen. This thing can twist a little bit one way or the other. You could put a tug on that. You don't want a tug.
All right, so what we're going to do is we're going to take out these two bolts. We're going to start with one over here. We're going to finish with this one right here, and this control arm will come right out. Firstly, I'm going to use a 14-millimeter wrench. The longer the better, because breaking these free can sometimes be difficult. Next, once you get it to the point that it seems like it's broken free, you can use a ratchet wrench. These are very convenient. Breaking them free: righty tighty and lefty loosey. We're removing, so loosey, to the left, counterclockwise. That broke free nice and easy, love it. Let's go over to this one. Do the same thing to the left, counterclockwise.
Now I'm going to grab my ratchet wrench. This is going to save us a little bit of time. Time is money. There are other things you can do to do this. You can use a ratchet with a short socket, if you'd like, but that's going to give you less space right here between the coil spring and the bolt. It could cause an issue at the point of getting the bolt completely out. I like to use something thin like a ratchet wrench, but you do always want to make sure that you don't go too far with the ratchet wrench. You can't switch it, and once you get too far it'll be stuck like that. I'm going to leave it right like that because now I'm going to go over here. Once this gets loose, I don't need this whole thing flopping around causing an issue for me. We're just going to bang these right out of here.
I'm having fun. You having fun? All right, both those feel like they're nice and loose. Pick which one you want. I like the left. Go this way. Start over here. I can lift this up, wiggle it around a little bit if it seems like it's jammed in. Sometimes things just get a little wedged. Work it. All right, that one's almost out. Grab this one. Do the same thing. That one's almost out. All right, as you can see, the coil spring is blocking the bolt from exiting completely on both sides. What I would normally do is I would bring the vehicle down to a working height, so I can get to the upper strut mount. There should be three or four bolts up there, which I'll find out once we get to the top. I'm going to take those bolts. I'm going to loosen them up to as loose as they can get without actually fully removing them. Hopefully, that will give us enough up and down movement on the coil spring that we can get past these coils.
Right here is going to be where your strut cap is. They got it nice and protected on this. They did a wonderful job. Just lift that right up and put it aside. You can even put it upside down because next, what we're going to have to do is remove these rubbers. They should come right up. What these do is they protect the threads that are under there from rust, corrosion, anything that might jam these nuts up. Genius. These guys are professionals. Take all three of them off. Boom, right inside the cap. You won't lose those.
Next, we're going to have to use a deep 14-millimeter socket. You can't use a shallow because as you can see, there is a shank to these bolts. If you use a shallow, you probably won't get down much further than here. That's not going to do much. You want to grip that whole nut with your six-point socket, not a 12. Put it right on there. Put your ratchet on off counterclockwise to the left, whatever you want to say. We're going to pop these free. One, two, three, just like that. One thing I do want to mention is you do not want to touch this nut right here. What this does is this holds your strut inside your strut mount. You remove this, you don't have anything that's holding that coil that I showed you under there from shooting right up. It could cause major issues. It could cause major safety concerns. Please, just don't touch this nut. That's something for a later date. We'll talk about it at another time.
What we're going to continue doing, though, is we're going to try to remove these nuts. I'd like to leave at least one of them with a couple threads on it and see if we can manipulate the strut up and down to get those bolts out. If not, we might have to remove them all the way. Two out of three, we'll just remove them all out of the way except for just that one. I'm going to start with one. I got the one off. I'm going to get this second one off. This one right here, I got so there's a couple threads sticking up there. It's still on there pretty nice. That's not bad. Next, we'll get back under there, and we'll try to manipulate that strut with the coil to see if we can get the bolts out. If not, we might have to take this nut all the way off, but let's leave it as it is for now.
Now I got all the nuts loosened up. I got two of them off up there, and the other one loosened up to the point it's almost off. What I wanted to do is I wanted to see if we can manipulate this strut right here with the coils out of the way of the bolts. I'm going to try holding onto the knuckle right here, so it doesn't move around too much because I'm going to be jerking stuff around. Try to pull down. As you can see, it really doesn't give us enough space to get those bolts out. We're going to have to take this to the next step.
I grabbed a bungee cord, and what I want to do is I want to hold this knuckle because I don't have three hands, I only have two. I'm going to go right to this piece right here. You can pick any hole you want--this is just the one that I'm choosing. I'm going to try to hold it on there. The reason for this is I want to make sure that there isn't too much tension on this brake flex hose. You put too much tension on this, same as the ABS wire, it could cause issues down the road. There's something else that I wanted to try, see if we can get a little more throw with this, is I want to move this sway bar link from the sway bar. What that'll help do is give us more throw on the pull down of this, hopefully, get more throw pulling down the coil spring, so we can hopefully get those bolts out. I know there's a lot of hopefuls, but that's life. Be hopeful.
Firstly, I should mention that I'm using a 12-millimeter, six-point socket. Put it on there. You're going to want to turn these counterclockwise to the level. You hear that puppy break free? Oh yeah. Get that one nice and loose. You don't have to take it all the way off yet. Grab your other one. Give it a little push. Oh yeah. All right, so what I did is I switched to a six-point, 12-millimeter socket. It's the short version as opposed to the long version. The reason for that is because we have this large backing plate right here, which is to help divert air into the braking system for help cooling and removing dust. As you could see, that might get in the way once I get this bolt and nut almost completely out. There's one nut. Get that one bolt out. Remove the sway bar link from the sway bar and pull that right down and out of the way. Next, we're going to try pulling down this, so we can see about getting those bolts out.
All right, so I do have to remove the last and third nut, turning it counterclockwise. Take it completely off of the threads. I'm going to put it up with the others. Now with the last third nut off completely, what I'm going to try to do is I'm going to hold this control arm up. I'm going to grab the coil spring with both hands. I'm going to give it a little tug. It might need more of a little tug, but little tug. Just slide that a little bit towards the front. Now as you can see, we can get these control arm bolts, hopefully.
Here we go. We're going to try taking out this bolt. It's nice and clear from the control arm. It popped right out. This is the rear bolt. It might not make a difference on this particular application, or it may. Some have different lengths. Some have different thicknesses. Some have different shanks. Let's remember that this one goes to the rear. Place it whatever is comfortable for you, so you can remember. If it doesn't seem like it wants to come off, you can grab your ratchet wrench again, assuming you have enough room. Get it in behind there. Give it a couple more turns because what will happens is the metal right here catches on the threads of the bolt and all it takes is a little bit of offset on the control arm in comparison to the body. It could lock it in a little bit. It is what it is. It's the nature of the beast. We're just going to remove this last bolt. It should come out now. Here we are, and there's the front bolt. No shank. It looks like it's about the same as the rear, but we'll keep them separate.
Next thing I want to show you is just moving this coil spring a little bit away from the upper control arm. We're going to want to hold the upper control arm at the same time in case it comes loose, or falls, or whatever it might do. Just see if you can give it a little push. Get it away, so you can move your control arm around. Now you can wiggle it. See if you can get it to move. It might not want to pop out, but it might. There we are. This is the old one. As I said, out with the old, in with the new. What we have here is a quality, 1A Auto part. It comes with the warranty. It's an excellent warranty, excellent quality part. It has the tapered ball joint shank right there or stud, I guess you could say, same as this.
One thing that I mentioned before that I'd also like to emphasize on now is comparing your part. You can do it while it's in the vehicle, very important to do that at the beginning. It's also important to do it when the part is out. You can get a better comparison, get things side by side. What we're going to do right now is I'm just going to show you. Lay it right over each other. Look at that. You can't get any better than that. These are specifically made for this particular vehicle. This will work perfectly, and let's put it in. I want to make sure that you know that you can get this or any other great quality part at 1AAuto.com.
This part, upper control arm for the left-hand side of the vehicle. It's already been matched up. What we're going to do is we're going to try to line up the holes. You might need a rubber mallet for this. We might not. I'll put it right aside. We're going to take this and try to get it lined up. This could be a little tricky. It's going to want to fight you. Everything is going to want to fight you a little bit. Part of the fun of it. Try banging it in there. Even if you could just get one hole semi-lined up, you could take your rubber mallet and then just give it a little love tap. Try to get it in close to where it needs to go. It looks like maybe a little bit further. I'm just going to start working on one hole at a time, just so you know. Don't try to line up both holes without getting any bolts in. Start with one hole. Get a bolt a little it started. A couple threads in will be great, and we'll go from there.
Next, what we're going to do is we're going to apply a little bit of thread locker to the bolts on this or to the threads, I should say. Just put a little dab. A little dab will do you. A couple little drops. You don't need much more than that. Any more than that, you're just overdoing it. What we need to do is just get that lined up, so we can get the bolt through. It's going to put up a fight. Just move your control arm around a little bit. Now we got this puppy going in. It was a fighter. Look at that. It slid right in. With that in, it's going to make it so this control arm won't move around too much more at this point. And we can try to line up that second bolt hole. Try to get it lined up with the hole. It might need a little bit of finagling. Oh yeah. That's what I'm talking about. That started right in.
Now just give it a couple turns and get it started. Then we'll be able to grab our ratchet wrench or ratchet, whatever you're working with, and tighten those right up. I'm just going to snug those up. You don't need to reef on them because there is a torque specification, which is 39-foot pounds. I'll show you that when we get to that point. Just get them pulled in nice and close. Assuming you have a torque wrench, you should, but assuming you do, we're going to try to torque these bolts: number one and number two. Something that I was noticing is that it might be a little bit difficult to get in between where the bolt and the coil spring is. Even if I was to pull this back down and out of the way, I don't think I'll have enough room and enough throw to get this in. If not, just do the best you can. Grab the front one. If it works for that one, try to gauge how much pressure you're putting on it and try to do about the same with the rear even if it's with a wrench. You don't have to reef on it and hang from it like a jimmy. Just get on it and do the best you can.
I'm going to put this on my six-point, 14-millimeter socket with my torque wrench. I'm going to torque it. This torque wrench is audible. Once it gets to the point of 39-foot pounds, it should beep at me, and say, "Hey, Lenny, you did enough." There we go, that's 39. As you could tell, that's really not much pressure. When I do go to the wrench for the other side, I'm not going to put very much pressure on it. You don't need to break anything. This one, as mentioned, we won't have room for the torque wrench, so I'm just going to use my wrench. I'm just going to give it a couple little tweaks. Just a little bit more. There we go, perfect. I already put a little bit of thread locker on there. Whether you can see it with the camera or not, it is. Just start these nuts: one, two, three.
Now we're just going to snug these down by hand. Get them close. Then we'll use our ratchet, give it a little bit more of a snug. Then we're going to go ahead and torque these. It's going to be 41-foot pounds. That's not a lot, but this will at least get it close. If there was four of these, you'd want to go in a crisscross pattern. There we go. Now I'm going to put this on the torque wrench. All right, so now I've got my torque wrench set to 41-foot pounds. I'm going to go ahead and start at the front. It's easy to remember where I started. There's one, two, three. I'm just going to go around one more time just to double-check and make sure everything is settled in nice. One, two, three. Once again, we did not touch this nut.
Now that we have these torqued down, we're going to go ahead and put these rubbers back on, very simple. Slide it on. One, two and three. What those do, once again, is they protect the threads from getting moisture or corrosion inside there and help you get these nuts off if at some point you need to take them off again. Now we have the cover. This cover is going to also protect everything from dirt, debris, whatever. You're still going to get stuff under there, but it's better than nothing. All right, let's get this sway bar link in. We're just going to try to line up the stud on the sway bar link to the hole in the sway bar. Get that as lined up as we can. We don't need to start the nut on there at this point. What we will try to do is get this other bolt started into the sway bar link while it's still loose. That's started in beautifully. I'll get it in a few threads.
Next, I will put on that nut. There's no available torque spec for this, so use your best judgment. It's not a very heavy duty bolt or stud, so reefing on it could cause yourself an issue. I would just tighten it and then give it just a little shake. It feels good. If you try going too tight, you could break it, or you could actually stretch the stud and/or bolt in which case you'll weaken it, and you could have issues further down the road. With both of those tightened up, we know that this side is tightened up as well. Sway bar link is good to go.
The upper ball joint control arm assembly--I'm going to pull it right down to the knuckle. Let's see, hold that. Turn a little bit to the left and find the first thread. Get that going. All right, so let's get this upper ball joint tightened down. We don't need to go too tight because, of course, we're going to torque it nice and snug. I'm going to grab my torque wrench to 64 foot-pounds. Here we go, 64. Next, we're going to just make sure that the holes in the ball joint stud line up with the holes in the castle nut. I'm going to grab my cotter pin, or safety pin, or whatever you want to call it these days. I'm going to try to push it through. It doesn't look like it wants to push through yet, so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to give this a little bit of a tweak. I want to get it to the closest hole possible.
Flip through my cotter pin. Grab it with your fingers, if you'd like, or your long-handled pliers, or anything you've got. Bend it over. What this is going to do is it's going to make sure that this nut can't back out for any reason. We torqued it, it's going nowhere. All right, now it's time to get the wheel up on here. Roll it up onto your leg or your knee. Never lift with your back unless you have to. You really shouldn't have to most times. Go ahead and grab a lug nut. We're going to start one on. Getting it lined up. Now that we've got our wheel on the ground you don't want all your pressure of your vehicle on it because if this isn't tightened down snug enough, you could off kilter your wheel. Even though you're thinking you're torquing it down to the 76 foot-pounds it's specified to be but it might not be.
With the wheel gently on the ground to the point where it can't spin on you, you're just going to start with one, and you're going to go in a criss-cross pattern with your 21 millimeter socket to 76 foot-pounds. One click: criss-cross. Make a star. If you're feeling up to it, let's go around one more time: One, two, three, four, five. This puppy is all torqued up. Good to go.
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Tools used
Hey everyone, it's Len down at 1A Auto. Today, we're going to be working on a 2001 Lexus GS300. What we have here, is the lower control arm for this particular vehicle. All right, so, here at 1A Auto, what we like to do is we like to show people how to get their own job done. The reason why you might have seen, when I was working on this, there was multiple things taken apart that normally you might not have taken apart, just to do a tie rod end, or a ball joint, or a lower control arm. I had to do it all at once. I had multiple things to replace. What I tried to do, was emphasize on the one part that you were installing at that one particular time. If you happened to notice the knuckle was off, and just doing the tie rod ends, or whatever it might have been, it's just because there was multiple jobs.
All right, one of the first things that we're going to want to do, is after we have the vehicle semi-supported off the ground, you want to make sure the wheel is still on the ground firmly. So you take your 21 mm socket, and if you have a long ratchet, or a breaker bar. One, just a little bit. You don't want to go too far. And as we take off this one last lug nut, you want to make sure you hold that wheel on. You don't want it to fall off, go bouncing off, hit you in the knee, hurt yourself. Safety is key. Let that down nice and easy.
We're going to take out this bolt right here. It's a simple 10 mm socket to remove it with a ratchet, or an air gun, whatever you've got. Nice and loose. I did pre-spray everything that I knew that I was going to have to remove, very important. It's going to help you out in the long run. Remove this bolt, very easy. Look at how much slack we have now? Nothing's going to hurt that. I'm going to put this bolt someplace where I can remember it, and it won't get lost.
All right, so next what we're going to do, is we're going to pull out this safety clip. And what this does, is it makes sure that this nut, for whatever reason, maybe it was under-torqued for some reason, or it just came loose. This clip is to make sure that the nut can't come all the way off, and then your ball joint and knuckle can't separate. This clip right here, isn't just a regular cotter pin. It has a little clip on the side that you have to pull out. You pull that away from the nut, and then you can grab this with your angled pliers, or angled cutters, whatever you have. Just give it a little yank. Usually they come right out. This one's a fighter, which is fine. I like that. And that pops right out.
And here's what your clip looks like, and there's the little angle right there that I was mentioning. Pull that away from the nut. All right, so our next step is, we're going to remove this nut right here. As you can tell, it's already starting to get a little bit wonky. Somebody tried using maybe a 12 point socket on this. The edges, where they're supposed to be nice and pointed, and cornered, are rounded. This could cause an issue for you trying to remove it. I don't anticipate it being an issue, because what I have is a six point socket, has a lot more grip on nuts this style. If you have a 12 point nut on there, you'd use a 12 point socket. You have a six point nut, use a six point socket. Fairly easy, right?
We're going to be using a 17 mm socket, just like that. Put it on, loosen. That's tighten. Give it a little yank, break it free. I brought it down just a couple threads. I don't know if you can see that or not, but you don't need to come all the way off yet. The reason for that, is because I'm going to take my big fabulous hammer, and I'm going to whack this knuckle right here. And what that's going to do, is it's going to cause a little bit of vibration, and what it should do, fairly easily, is break the ball joint free from the knuckle.
Once that's free, I'll put away my big, fabulous hammer, so I can have two hands. I'm going to put my hand on this, hold it nice and firm, then I'm going to take this nut completely off and bring this down under a controlled motion. So, here we go. Big, fabulous hammer time. Bing. As you can see, it broke free. We got a little bit of gap between the boot and the knuckle, and there's no gap between the nut and the knuckle.
So, here's where the six point, 17 millimeter socket in our ratchet's going to come in. You're going to keep one hand on this, as soon as you get it down to the end, so you can have controlled motion in this knuckle, very important. This nut is almost off, so I'm going to hold the knuckle. I can hold up the ratchet at the same time, if that's what you're into. We're just going to get this right off of here. There we go. Last couple threads, holding the knuckle firm. You can lift up on that ball joint, separate the ball joint from the knuckle. Let this down slow. The reason for that is, you want to make sure that you have control over it with this hose right here.
As you can tell, the ABS wire that we did disconnect, very safe, nothing happened to it. But if it was mounted, look at how close it would have been. That's pretty close. Anything can happen. This thing can twist a little bit, one way or the other. You could put a tug on that. You don't want a tug. So, right here is going to be where your strut cap is. They got it nice and protected on this. They did a wonderful job. Just lift that right up, put it aside, you can even put it upside down, because next, what we're going to have to do is remove these rubbers. They should come right up.
What these do, is they protect the threads that are under there from rust, corrosion, anything that might jam these nuts up. Genius. These guys are professionals. Take all three of them off. Right? Boom. Right inside the cap. You won't lose those. Next, we're going to have to use a deep 14 millimeter socket. You can't use a shallow, because as you can see, there is a shank to these bolts. If you use a shallow, you probably won't get down much further than here. That's not going to do much. You want to grip that whole nut with your six point socket, not a 12.
Put it right on there. Put your ratchet on off, counterclockwise, to the left, whatever you want to say. We're going to pop these free. One, two, three. Just like that. One thing I do want to mention, is you do not want to touch this nut right here. What this does, is this holds your strut inside your strut mount. You remove this, you don't have anything that's holding that coil that I showed you under there from shooting right up. It could cause major issues, could cause major safety concerns. Please just don't touch this nut. That's something for a later date. We'll take about it another time.
What we're going to continue doing though, is we're going to try to remove these nuts. I got the one off. I'm going to get this second one off. I should mention that I'm using a 12 millimeter, six point socket. Put it on there. You're going to want to turn these counterclockwise, to the left. You hear that puppy break free? Oh yeah. Get that one nice and loose. You don't have to take it all the way off yet. Grab your other one, give it a little push. Oh yeah.
All right, so what I did is I switched to a six point, 12 millimeter socket. It's the short version as opposed to the long version. The reason for that is because we have this large backing plate right here, which is to help divert air into the braking system for help cooling and removing dust. But as you can see, that might get in the way once I get this bolt and nut almost completely out. There's one nut, get that one bolt out. Remove the sway bar link from the sway bar. You can pull that right down and out of the way.
All right, so next, what we're going to do for the sway bar link, is we're going to remove this 17 millimeter nut. Using a six point socket, 17, might need something with a little bit of girth to it, a little bit of length to break it free. There we go. Just remove this nut completely. Now that the nuts off, we're going to try to take this stud out of here. It goes completely through this lower control arm, and comes out the other side. It's probably going to be stuck in there, depending on the year, and everything off this. But odds are, it'll be stuck in there pretty good.
I would try using an air hammer. You can get these anywhere. Or you can try using a hammer if you got a lot of time, and a lot effort, I would go that way as well. But the key is to just get it out. So watch your ears, watch your eyes. Safety first. Here we go. Oh wow. And here we go, it should just pull right out. Sometimes the plate's a little bit in the way, it's flexible.
So to get this bolt out right here, it's a through bolt coming from the front to the rear. The rear has a nut, the nut is a 19 millimeter. The front is a 17 millimeter. What you want to do is you want to remove the nut from the bolt. Holding the bolt still with your 17 millimeter wrench, coming from the back side. Hold it as tight as you can. Watch your eyes, safety first. Put your 19 millimeter socket on. If you have an air gun, that's optimal. If you don't, well, good luck. Here we go. Watch your ears.
That nut zipped right off. As you can see, threads are decent. If you did have to reuse it, you could. We're going to take out this through bolt. From the rear toward the front. You can push it with your thumb if you're strong enough. Sometimes you might have to wiggle stuff around. And you also might have to use a punch and a hammer, which is what I'm going to use. With your hammer, your chisel, and your safety glasses, come over, you put your chisel right on the end of the bolt. You're just going to love tap it out.
As it comes out, you might notice that the control arm might drop a little bit. Be aware. You're just going to keep tapping it. Might get in the way of the sway bar, but that's okay, because look at what we did. We can pull this down, and out it comes. Now I'm going to remove this strut, which is fairly easy. Just go like this. And this comes out as one full assembly. Next thing we're going to do is take off the caliper slider bolts. These are the bolts that hold the caliper to the sliders.
Fourteen millimeter heads, so I'm going to use a six point, 14 millimeter. I'm going to make sure my ratchet's on reverse, or off. Break these free. Get that one going a little bit. Get this one going. They feel like they're nice and loose. I could probably do it right by hand. Hold on to your caliper just in case anything happens. Shouldn't go anywhere, but you never know. Safety first.
Put your two caliper bracket bolts and caliper slider bolts aside. Try to work this. All right. Hang this, and put it aside. So now I have it hanging, so there's no pressure on the brake flex hose. Any pressure you put could cause a bind, could cause a little tear. Really, it could cause anything. Brakes are high pressure systems, so if you have any type of bubble, or a tear inside your brake hose, always replace your brake hose, no matter what. Don't risk it. Safety first.
Using a 17 millimeter, six point socket, we're going to take off the caliper bridge bolts. And as always, you want to break these free. Don't take one out without starting the other loose first. Give it a couple bonks. Should break free. Like I said before, when you're working from the front of something, and bolts are on the back, you're going to have to work in reverse. So, if something that normally is to the left to take it out, when you're working at it from the opposite side, you're going to turn to the right.
Now, I'm going to remove the lower bolt. Give it a bonk, breaks it free. Now with that upper bolt loose, but not completely removed, I can take out this lower bolt. Holding onto my caliper bracket, make sure it doesn't fall and hit the ground, or my toe, or anybody else. Now I'm going to remove the upper bolt. There we go. Now your caliper bracket is off. So now we're back up top, we loosened up our jam nut while this was still attached to the knuckle. We've got the same little clip, like what we saw before, or maybe you haven't seen, but it is in one of my videos.
We're going to pull the little ear off, or off to the side, and then pull it out. The ear that I was talking about is this, and it wraps around the side of this slotted nut. Put that aside so you don't lose it. Next, we're going to take our 17 millimeter, you can use a shallow socket if you want, it'll probably be better than a long socket, because you don't want to be up here. Might as well be as close to what you're working on as possible. Goes right on, 17 millimeter, six point socket. We're going to try to break this free.
There we go. If you have an air gun, take you 10 seconds. If you go a ratchet, it'll take you 30. That nut right off of there. As always, I pre-spray everything, so it already worked it's way in there. Now what I'm going to do, is I'm going to get my big, fabulous hammer and I'm going to whack the knuckle, try to break this free. What I'm going to also make sure I do, is I'm going to put this nut right back on. You don't need to go all the way one, a couple threads, three, four, five, whatever you want to do, doesn't have to go all the way down.
Basically, just so when you whack it, and this does break free, it doesn't come falling down. If you're working on the ground, you get your face near there, or whatever, god forbid, somebody gets hurt. Safety first. Don't let this go anywhere. This is will help prevent any safety hazards. Like I said, using my big, fabulous hammer, I'm going to hit right on the knuckle. I don't need to hit the tie rod. I don't need to hit the nut. As some point, if it doesn't break free from here, I could use a little chisel, or even a hammer on there, because we're going to be replacing the tie rod end anyway. If we weren't replacing it, you would not want to hit this. Here we go.
There we go. Broke free. Now you can go ahead and hold it up, make sure it doesn't fall, hit you in the face, anything. There we are. And next, we're taking off this knuckle. What we're going to do, is we're going remove the two lower bolts right here. There's one right there, there's one on the other side. And that will remove the knuckle from the ball joint assembly. Finding the bolt. Safety glasses on. Take that out. You can give it a couple screws in if you like. I would recommend it. Just give it a couple threads, it'll help keep that from falling off, possibly hurting you.
Next, I'm going to find the other 17 millimeter bolt. Watching your ears. Take that one completely out. So now I'm just going to bonk it. And should want to break free. There we go. Going to take out that one bolt that I started in a little bit. There it is. Put it aside, where it won't get lost. Making sure that our ABS wire is nice and wound up, so it can't be hanging onto anything when you remove your knuckle. You can put that aside.
All right, so now that we've gotten to this point, and no, you don't have to take the whole knuckle out to do this, but for my purposes, I'm doing a lot of different things on the front end. I just took it right out of the way. All right, so now it's time to get this ball joint off the lower control arm. As you can see, it has a cotter pin down here. What this does, is it actually folds over and it makes it so if for some ungodly reason this nut came loose, whether it wasn't torques, or wasn't tightened on enough, the nut can't come off all the way.
So I'm going to use my cutters. I'm just going to grab onto it, very carefully. Bend it out of the way. You can cut it right off if you want. But if you don't need to, you don't need to. I will. Boom. Little piece is getting ready to come out. Get the little fat side right there, you can grab it, pull it out. This is actually a 19 millimeter nut. You can use a short, or a deep socket. Short will work because it doesn't have a long shank, six point if you have it. See if this puppy breaks free. Nice. There we go.
So, you can take it all the way off, or just leave it on a thread or two. Next, if you have the opportunity, or you have the tool, you can use a pickle fork, or you can just whack on the control arm with a hammer, but a pickle fork, if you have it is the optimal tool to use. You're going to stick it in between there, carefully, with safety glasses, get it started. Moves around a lot without the... There we go.
And there's our old ball joint. Now, we're going to take our 17 millimeter socket, we're going to take off this bolt right here. And what that does, is it holds on this bracket, which holds in your strut assembly. So, 17 millimeter socket, safety glasses always. Put it on there. There it is. So now what we're going to do, is we're going to remove the lower control arm. To that, it's very simple, there's a 19 millimeter bolt here, 19 millimeter bolt here, and there's a 19 millimeter bolt back there.
To get to that one, we're going to remove this shield, or at least push it out of the way, be removing this bolt. That's by using a 10 millimeter socket, by the way, very easy to do. You can use anything to do it. All right, so right you'll notice that there's an alignment adjustment. What you want to do is you want to take a crayon, or a marker, or whatever you have access to. And you want to just make a mark. And you can make that mark anywhere that's visible to you. And essentially, you just want to be able to line you old mark up where the bolt was. So that way there, when you take this out, and you put it back in, you can get it as close as possible for the person that's going to be doing your alignment in the future.
So next, what we're going to have to do, is we're going have to remove these two bolts right here. Right there, there's one right here, one right there. And what that's going to do, is it's going to release the lower control arm from this arm right here. And then next, what we'll do is move onto here. But first, let's start with these. They might be a little tough to get off, but we'll give it a try with this, 19 millimeter socket, six point if you have access to it.
That ones not coming off. Let's try this one. All right, so one of them broke free. If you had this issue, a couple possibilities, if you had access to an air gun, go that way, you might have better chances. If you don't have access, you could try to heat this arm a little bit. You don't want to go cherry red, that'll weaken the integrity of the metal, but you can get it nice and warm, and that'll help soak in your lubricant, and it should give you better access to be able to get that bolt off.
For me, I'm going to just try the air gun real quick. And we'll see how that goes. I'm going to give the one that didn't want to move, a try with my 19 millimeter, six point socket. Air gun, watch your ears, safety glasses. Yeah. We're going to move onto the next bolt right here. There we are. There's the two bolts. They look like they're in good condition. Completely reusable. And the threads don't look too bad. If you did notice that they were rusted, you might want to clean them up if you have access to a wire wheel. These don't look very bad at all.
Next, we're going to take off this right here. And it's going to be the last bolt of this process. So what we can do, is we can put in another one of our old bolts that we just took out right here. We'll just put in a couple threads, so this doesn't drop down. If you're under the vehicle, laying on the ground, you don't want this hitting you in the face. I'll just take one second. Like I said, just a couple threads, it's going to keep it from falling, hurting somebody. Safety first, always at 1A Auto.
Next, we're going to use our 19 millimeter socket. We're going to put it on this nut right here. And on the back side, you need to use 22 millimeter wrench to hold the back side. I'll put on that wrench. Get my ratchet on here, give this a little tug, one second. That broke free nice. Then just turn that all the way out, counterclockwise. All right, so next, what I'm going to do, is I'm going to try to turn this bolt, because it seems like it's kind of stuck in there a little bit.
So I'm going to use my 22 millimeter socket on the back side. Turning it to the left. I guess you can go either way, really. See if you can get this to break free. It really doesn't seem like it wants to break free. I'll try going the other direction. Moves the arm up and down, but the bolt actually is stuck inside the bushing of the lower control arm. This is very common. This is going to be a fun part of the job for you.
So what I would like to do, is I'm going to tighten this up a little bit more, and that'll give me a little bit of support with this arm, so this doesn't go up and down too much on me. And then, what I'm going to try to do is apply a little bit of heat. I can either go to the head of the bolt, not a lot of heat, you don't need to get it cherry red, like I said before. A little bit of heat, and see if we can get some penetrant sucked inside there, in between the bushing of this lower control arm, and the bolt.
All right, so now that I've tightened this bolt up a little bit right here, I've got a couple more threads going up in there, I'm going to try to heat up the tip of this. Get it a little bit warm. Like I said, I don't want to get it cherry red. I don't want to weaken the integrity of this bolt. It has to be strong. It's integral to the safety of the vehicle. Once I get that heated up, I'm going to put a little bit of spray right there, and hope that it works its way in.
And then I'm going to move over to the other side. I'm going to do the exact same thing. Little bit of heat, get it so it's warm, and then I'm going to spray it with penetrant, and let it sit for a little while. Making sure there's nothing, no wires or anything behind where the flame might go, wearing eye protection. Just going to spark this puppy up. Like a hot air balloon. You don't want to breathe in the smoke from this, known in the state of California to cause cancer and blah, blah, blah.
I do believe that inhaling anything that isn't clean air into your lungs, probably isn't the best thing for you. So, just give it a couple blasts, hope that it works its way in. Give that smoke a second to dissipate. Now I'm going over to the other side, I'm going to do the exact same thing. My crayon mark might come off, that's, you know, it's going to happen. I could use a chisel, but the alignment guy will be able to figure it out. If he can't, then we've got bigger issues than that.
Just going to get it warm. I'm not using an acetylene torch. There we go. I'm going to blast this side a little bit. And then what I'm going to do, is I'm going to come around to the inside where the control arm bushings meet the body, or the sub frame, I'm going to blast in there too. Any place that hopefully this lubricant can make its way into, I'm going to give a try.
Now that we have that in there, I'm going to use my air gun, my 22 millimeter socket, six point, safety glasses as always. If you were going to try to use your air gun to get in here, what you'll notice is you have to take off the outer and inner tie rod, because that'll travel right along here. And you just really won't have access to be able to get in there. So, luckily, for me, I'm doing other front end work, on this job, and so it's out of the way, anyway. But for you, if you were going to use an air gun, you're going to have to take off the inner and outer tie rod.
So, here we go. I'm going to give it a little blast, and see if this does something nice for us. And it doesn't. So now that we got that nut off, what you'll notice is there's another part of the alignment adjustment right here. You want to try to mark which way it goes, if you want. Or it's pretty easy to figure out. It's slotted. So, you'll notice that the bolt has two slots. This has two slots, and when you put the alignment washer in, it's going to essentially go facing up. You don't need it this way, that doesn't make any sense. So, going up with all your lines facing out.
Nope. All right, so heating it, and using the air gun with some spray didn't seem to want to loosen it up. The bolt through the bushing that is. So, I'm just going to heat it up again real quick. And then you'll notice that the bolt on the end right here has a little center hole, so what I'm going to do, is I'm going to grab an air chisel, with a center punch bit, and I'm going to try whacking on that a couple times with the air chisel, see if I can break it up free inside there. And here's hoping.
Try to heat it from this side, so hopefully when I spray that side, it'll suck the penetrant through. Once again, you don't want to breathe in any of those fumes. It's going to be almost impossible, but try. Little bit of spray coming in from this side. You can see how far the heat gets when I spray on this side. Not getting too much smoke, so I could probably heat up this side a little bit more to try to get this side nice and warm. That way there, when the heat comes through from this side, it's going to try to attract the penetrant through to the other side.
There we go. Hear a little sizzling. That sounds nice. Just keep giving it a little spritz, little spritz. You don't need to soak it, so it's pouring down all over your driveway, your floor. All right, now what I'm going to do, is I'm going to let that soak while I go get my air hammer, and we'll see how that goes. So, now we're going to work on getting this bolt out again. It's going to be a little bit of a fighter. Got your safety glasses on, a little bit of ear protection.
I'm going to be using my air chisel. Firstly, what I wanted to make sure that we do, is we're going to try to protect the threads on this bolt right here. By doing that, I'll just use the nut that came off of it. Should thread right on. Go this way, get it started. You want to get it pretty much lined up, so that you don't damage the threads of the nut or the bolt in case you happen to slip off with your air chisel.
That feels pretty flush. There won't be any damage, if for some reason, I do slip off. Next, I'm going to grab my air chisel, and I'm going to come at that center punch hole right there. The hole is there specifically to give me a spot to put the air chisel on. Apparently, they knew what was coming. So here we go. Going to try to apply pressure. The nut's starting to work its way off. That's okay. But the bolt is starting to push through, so we're winning. Here we go. Go a little more.
All right, it looks like it's going to be ready to come out. Just going to take that nut completely off. Put it back in its safe place where it won't get lost. Now I'm just going to drive that bolt the rest of the way in the rearward position of the car, holding my control arm. Phew. Now that's that. Next, what we're going to do, is we're just going to take off this one last bolt that we put on to make sure it holds it up and doesn't hit us in the face, and this control arm's ready to come right out.
Going to take out this last bolt. Should only be a few threads in, and just hold up your control arm, it might want to fall. Take your bolt out. You can shake this. And its just going to separate the control arm from the sub frame. And there it is.
All right, so as you'll notice, we have our original OE Lexus control arm. This is the lower control arm. We just spent a lot of time removing it. It's definitely worn, definitely beat. What usually goes bad on these, would be this bushing in here. You'll see a lot of dry rotting and cracking. This one isn't really super bad. It's not something that I would consider a safety concern. But for the likes of this video, we're going to just replace it anyway.
We have our quality 1A Auto lower control arm. As you can tell, it's made to the exact same specifications, if not a little bit better than the original quality. Everything's shaped the same. Has the same bolt hole line ups. I don't see any reason why this wouldn't fit directly into your vehicle. And for this, or any other part, you can always come to 1AAuto.com.
All right, so you'll notice that our lower control arm inward bolt is pretty rotted. I don't think the threads are super bad, because up here's where the nut's going to be. But what I'd like to do, is I'd like to clean this up. If you have access to a wire wheel, I would definitely go with that. Or if you had a wire brush, you could go with that, it's going to take you a little while. We'll get this cleaned up, and we'll analyze it at that point. But I don't see this to be much of an issue.
The other two bolts, the threading on them is not too bad. They're not stripped. They're not cross threaded. There's a little bit of debris inside the threads, we can clean that up. Once we get it cleaned up, we'll make a determination on if we need to replace them. If not, once they're cleaned up, we'll install the control arm. We'll make sure that we use a little bit of threadlocker on these threads, and it should be good to go.
Always making sure we keep our hands away from the anything that spins, moves, wearing safety glasses is key. This little pieces can fly off, get you right in the eye. You don't want that. So here we go. I'm just going to take it nice and light at first, see what we got. I'm just going to do half the bolt, so you can see the difference. Alight, so I got that nice and cleaned up. And I wanted to show you the difference. Right here's where the nut's going to ride, the mounting nut. This is going to be inside your control arm. If the nut was down at this point, those threads, as you can tell, they're really not in the best condition. If that's where the nut was going to be, I might want to replace this, but these look great.
I want to show you what it looked like before. Yeah, if you didn't have access to a wire wheel, or a wire brush, I guess you could probably use that. But that's taking your risk. For me personally, that looks much better. You can put some threadlocker on there, and I think that that's going to set in nice. I would go with cleaning this bolt up completely. We'll double check it at that point, but I'm going to go with the assumption that this bolts going to be perfectly fine.
So I just went over and I cleaned up all of our bolts. As you can tell, the threads were the nuts going to ride, beautiful, you can't beat that really. It's almost practically new. Down here where it rides inside the bushing, you can see where a lot of that rust and rot and everything was that was locking it into the bushing. Also, these are the two bolts for the lower control arm that we had taken out, the 19 millimeter heads. So, something that I'd like to mention is, as we mentioned, we had an issue trying to get the lower control arm mounting bolt out. And it was because it was frozen inside the lower control arm bushing.
What I'd like to do is use a little bit of Copper Anti-Seize, and put it right along here. It's better to use the paste than the spray. The spray is indirect, you might get it up on here. Use Anti-Seize where it rides inside the bushing, and use Threadlocker where the nuts going to ride. As I mentioned, the paste is great for being direct in putting the Anti-Seize exactly where you want it. So you can go all over, any areas that go inside that bushing. And this is going to help you out some day if you keep this car for a 100, or not a hundred years I'm sure.
But, 10 years, you might have to do this again some day, and the Anti-Seize is just going to make it so you can get it out. It'll also help the alignment guy when he goes in to do the alignment. Next, we're going to use our Threadlocker. All right, so we got a couple little drops on there. You don't need to go to crazy with it. Just a couple drops. While I've got it going, I'm going to grab my other two bolts. I'm just going to go on the tip. The reason why I'm going to close to the tip, is as you put the nut on, obviously, the nut starts towards the end, and it works its way in. So it's going to grab it, drag it in with it.
So now these are going to be ready to install that lower control arm. So we have our premium quality 1A Auto part. I'm going to put it inside the lower sub frame. Try to work it's way in there, line up the holes. I'm going to take my bolt with the camber adjustment in, or up, go from the rear to the front, that's the way we took it out. Just leave it in there for now. Then I'm going to take one of these bolts. I'm going to start it into this arm, and this'll just help make sure that the lower control arm doesn't fall down and hurt anybody, myself included.
Give it a couple threads, so it can't go anywhere. So now I'm going to put on that adjustment washer. I'm going to line it up like I said. I'm going to have it facing up. It's kind of an oblong. Line it up with those bolt holes. Turn it a little bit. Get it in there. Next, I'm going to put on my 19 millimeter nut. Turn it on as close as I can by hand, why not. That's pretty good. Then I'm going to grab my 22 millimeter socket for the back, so I can hold the bolt still, and my 19 millimeter for the front. And we'll tighten it down nice and snug.
22 on the back, 19 on the front. Make sure you're in the on position. We don't need to go too tight, because we do need to torque it. That feels pretty good. Now, I'm going to grab the torque wrench with a 19 millimeter socket, and I'm going to torque it to 127. I got my torque wrench, I've got it set to 127 foot pounds, which is the manufacturer's torque specification. 22 millimeter socket on the back to hold the bold still. I'm going to wait for a click.
And that's it. I'm going to get these last two bolts in here. I got this one started. I'm going to take this one, I'm going to try to get it started. I might need to do a little bit of manipulation of the arms, just to get the two holes lines up. Get that couple threads in, so I can make sure it's not cross threading. And then I'm going to take my air gun, or if you happen to have a long handled ratchet, you can use that with a 19 millimeter socket. I'm going to tighten it up.
You don't need to reef on these too much, you do want to make sure they're tight. Different guns have different specifications, but use your best judgment. You don't need to overdo it. You don't want to break a bolt, it's going to cause an issue for you. So I'm just going to blast it in. I've been working with this gun for a long time. Those are nice and tight. They're not going anywhere for a long, long time.
Next, we're going to put the lower strut bracket onto the lower control arm. What we're going to do, is we're going to put a little bit of threadlocker on our bolt. That goes through this hole, which in turn goes through this hole inside the lower control arm. So I'm going to line it up, get this threaded in. Leave it a little loose, because the next step, we're going to put either your old, or your new sway bar link into this piece right here. And once we get that in, then we can go ahead and start tightening things up.
All right, so our new 1A Auto part, sway bar link comes with a brand new nut. Wonderful thing about it is the fact that it comes pre-locked. See how it's oblonged. Maybe you can't with the camera, but it is actually oblonged. That means that this is a self-locking nut. Technically, you don't need to use any threadlocker. It's up to you if you want to or not. But you should be good to go, just using it as is.
This is going to go in from front to rear. Should slide right through. Nice and easy. I got my locking nut on the back side. I can tell it's locking, because it's oblonged. Start it on there. Now that both of those are started, I can go ahead and start tightening things up. So first I'm going to start up here. This is the 17 millimeter bolt. Use your air gun, or use your ratchet, whatever you have access to.
Blast that on there. Nice and tight. And then I'm going to come down here, and I'm going to tighten this up. That should be a 19 millimeter, got my 19 millimeter six point. Put it on there. Shouldn't really need to hold it, it should itself pretty firm. In case it doesn't, we'll just grab onto there with some locking pliers, but let's see if it just blasts on. Nice. That's perfect. We're all set with that lower control arm now.
So, up here, you'll notice that there's a strut tower integrity plate. This just gives a little bit extra strength for when you have your strut in there, and you bolt it up. What you'll notice is that the bolt holes aren't necessarily the same length between each other. So if you go to put this in, and you have it turned, you're not paying attention, you're going to try to put the strut in, you might get one in, but the other two might not line up. Try turning up, still not lining, try turning it. Now we get it lined up.
A good thing about the way that Lexus did it on this particular vehicle, is they put an arrow facing forward. Anytime you see an arrow, generally speaking, it's either facing forward or facing up. So, that would be lined up. And now we'd be at the point, that we can grab that strut, and install it. And we'll be able to put our nuts on, and everything should line up fine. Now assuming you're using your old strut, or even if you're using a new strut, quality part from 1A Auto, you want to make sure that were your ABS connector connects onto is going to match up to where it was connected on the old part.
We're just going to go ahead and put in the old part, and we'll see how it goes. But basically, these bolt holes should line up with the holes that you line up there. And this should face to the forward of the vehicle, which is where the ABS wire goes into. I'm going to go underneath the vehicle, try to line up the studs in with the holes. Should slide right up in. Pull down in the lower control arm a little bit, and that'll give me pressure. Now this can't really go anywhere.
While holding it, just in case it does want to go somewhere, I'm going to come up, I already put a little bit of threadlocker on there, whether you can see it with the camera or not, it is. Just start these nuts. One, two, three. Now I can go ahead and release the strut with my other arm. I don't have to worry about it coming out. So now we're just going snug these down by hand. Get them close. Then we'll use our ratchet, give it a little bit more a snug. And then we're going to go ahead and torque these. It's going to be 41 foot pounds, that's not a lot.
But this will at least get it close. If there was four of these, you'd want to go in a crisscross pattern. There we go. Now I'm going to put this on the torque wrench. All right, so now I've got my torque wrench set to 41 foot pounds. I'm going to go ahead and start at the front. It's easier to remember where I started. There's one, two, three. I'm just going to go around one more time, just to double check, make sure everything settled in nice. One, two, three. Once again, we did not touch this nut.
So now that we have these torqued down, we're going to go ahead and put these rubbers back on. Very simple, slide it on. One, two, and three. And what those do, once again, is they protect the threads from getting moisture or corrosion inside there, help you get these nuts off if at some point you need to take them off again. Now, we have the cover. This cover's going to also protect everything from dirt, debris, whatever. You're still going to get stuff under there, but it's better than nothing.
And here we have our lower strut mount bolt. And what this is going to do, it's going to go through from the rear to the front. And we have the nut, it's going to go on the forward side of it. You'll notice that I put a little bit of Threadlocker on there. And next, what I'm going to do, is I'm just going to put a little bit of Never-Seize on here. You can, you don't have to. But the Threadlocker is very important. I'm going to put the Never-Seize only because if it gets stuck in here, someday it might become a future issue. So I'll just put a little dab of that. Don't have to go too crazy with it.
And then I'll try to line up the holes by pushing up and down on this lower control arm. Be easier without the bolt in my hand, or the nut. Put that there. Push it through. Just like that. And I'm going to take my nut. I always go a little bit to the left first just so I can find the first thread. And then turn it on, give it a couple threads before you go ahead try tightening it down with anything. You don't want to cross thread it.
And then I'm going to hold this side with a wrench, and then I'm going to grab this side, and I'm going to drive it in, get it close. And then I'm going to look up the torque specifications, and I'll let you know about that. I'm going to use a 19 millimeter on this side, and a 17 millimeter on this side. I'm just going to get it close. You don't have to go too crazy on tightening it up, because we're going to torque it to 116 foot pounds.
That feels pretty good. I'm going to grab my torque wrench. Normally, I'd want to try to tighten something and torque it from the nut side. But where I don't have any space to get in there with the sway bar in the way, I'm just going to come from the back side, it'll be fine. I'm going to go 116 foot pounds. All right, let's get this sway bar link in. We're just going to try to line up the stud on the sway bar link to the hole in the sway bar. Get that as lined up as we can. We don't need to start the nut on there at this point, what we will try to do is get this other bolt started into the sway bar link while it's still loose.
That started in beautifully. I'll get it in a few threads. Next, I will put on that nut. There's no available torque spec for this, so use your best judgment. It's not a very heavy duty bolt, or stud, so reefing on it could cause yourself an issue. I would just tighten it, then give it just a little shake, feels good. If you try going too tight, you could break it, or you could actually stretch the stud and/or bolt. And in which case, you'll weaken it, and you could have issues further down the road.
With both of those tightened up, we know that this side's tightened up as well, sway bar link's good to go. We got our old ball joint off. You might be doing this inside the vehicle, which is fine, but for me, I'm doing other jobs on this vehicle, so I had the knuckle out. I'm just going to do this while it's out. It's going to very simple. Here's our old, in with the new. Throw this in the recycling pile. So, you'll notice that this has little shafts on it. Those are going to go into these bolt holes a little bit, and it's going to help you align.
So you put it so the ball joint's facing down. Those go in just a little bit, they're meant to be forced in, not just kind of babied in, so that's what these are going to do. We'll just get them started. By the way, I put Threadlocker on these, so we'll get this started in by hand. Got a few threads in, that's not going anywhere. Get this one started. Never tighten any bolt like this before getting the other one started, because you might have to move the ball joint around a little bit.
Both of those are in. I know nothing's cross threaded, now I'm going to take my air gun, you can use a ratchet if that's what you'd like. But I prefer to use an air gun, because I have access to it. With a 17 millimeter, six point socket, and I'm going to blast them right in. Keeping my fingers clear of any pinch points, which would be between here and here. And those are in.
All right, so I'm going to remove the lower ball joint nut. I'm going to set it right in here. Holding the knuckle firmly so it can't fall down hit me in the head, I'm going to get this one started. I'm going to turn a little bit to the left, just to find the first thread there. And then I'm going to turn to the right. Get it started. You don't have to tighten it all the way down.
Now using our 21 millimeter socket, we're just going to snug this up. You don't have to go too much, because we're going to torque it. The torque on this is 83 foot pounds. I'm going to get my torque wrench, my socket, bring it over. All right, now that we've got it that far, what we need to do, is make sure that the hole for the ball joint lines up with the castle nut hole. It goes through perfectly. Now I'm just going to ping it over so it can't come loose, be careful not to get a poke point on your fingers.
If you wanted to, you could bonk it with whatever you have in your hand really. And that lower ball joint's all done. The upper ball joint, control arm assembly, I'm going to pull it right down to the knuckle. See, hold that, turn a little bit to the left, find the first thread. Get that going. Now, I'm sure that nothing's going to fall down, hit anybody, cause any safety issues, I can let go and I can find my torque specifications.
All right, so let's get this upper ball joint tightened down, we don't need to go too tight, because of course, we're going to torque it. Nice and snug. I'm going to grab my torque wrench, to 64 foot pounds. There we go, 64. Next, we're just going to make sure that the holes in the ball joint stud line up with the holes in the castle nut. I'm going to grab my cotter pin, or safety pin, or whatever you want to call it these days.
I'm going to try to push it through. Doesn't look like it wants to push through yet, so I'm going to do is I'm just going to give this a little bit of a tweak. We're going to get it to the closest hole possible. Put through my cotter pin, grab it with your fingers if you'd like, or your long handled pliers, or anything you've got, bend it over. What this is going to do, is it's going to make sure that this nut can't back out for any reason. We torqued it, it's going nowhere.
All right, so now we're going to go ahead and start reinstalling this ABS wire. You'll notice that it has a little lip right here. This is going to go on the back side. So that means you're coming from the rear of the strut hole. You're going to take your bolt, 10 millimeter head, you're just going to turn a little bit to the left to get it started. Sorry about my arm in your way. Then I'm going to go to the right, rightie-tightie.
I'm going to snug it up. You don't have to go too far. Next, I'm going to take this one, you'll notice that it's got a little lip right here, this goes under here. It's going to hold it stable. So I'm going to come in, need my hand up here. Can start it, I'm going to go a little bit to the left find my first hole, first thread I mean, hopefully. I'm going to turn it to the right. That would be tightening. All right, those are both started. This comes along here. It's not going to hit anything. Everything's safety secured once I tighten it down.
Next, I'm going to take the wire connectors, having previously checked to make sure that there's no corrosion, rust, debris, dirt, gunk, anything, I'm going to take it, and you're going to hear an audible sound. Click. Next, I'm going to tuck this up in behind here, and there's a spot to mount it. You won't be able to see it on camera, but it'll get done. Making sure that that's up above where it's supposed to go. This one, number two, there's only two bolts.
All right, and now, I'm going to make sure that I emphasize on the importance of making that these are secure. What happens is, is if you don't have either of these secured, let's say maybe for some reason one of these breaks, you have your wire hanging down, it could get caught on anything, your turning, your steering, the suspensions jostling up and down, anything. If this wire's flopping around, and it gets caught in your sway bar link, a bolt, I don't know, a branch in the road, it could cause an issue.
There's reasoning behind why they made all these mounting spaces. It's to keep everything safe and secure. Going to line up the stud with this right here. We can start our nut. Turning to the left to find our first thread, get it started. Now we're going to be installing our caliper bracket. We have our caliper mounting bolts. The threads are nice and clean. If you wish, you could use some threadlocker. For this particular application, I'm not going to worry about it.
I'm going to start one bolt in, you can start with the top, the bottom, whatever you want to do, it's your preference. You don't need to get it all the way in, yet, because as always, you need to move things around a little bit to get the next bolt started, why tighten it all the way day. Now I have my torque wrench set to 87 foot pounds with my 17 millimeter socket on there. I'm just going to go until this tells me it's ready. Little bit more. There we are. There's one, two. I'm going to go around one more time, just to double check, make sure everything's settled in as the way it should. One, two.
Making sure that I put the part with the brake squealer on there, which is just a wear indicator, on the inside, and in the downward position. I'm going to come from the inside, place it in. You hear it snap right in. Moves around pretty good. Nice and easy. I'm going to go ahead and put on the outer pad, same idea, moves around nice and easy. Nothing stuck in the brackets. This should slide right over. Just like this. And this one, just like that. Line up the holes, then you're going to grab your caliper bracket bolts, start both of those in. I'll grab those right now. You can use a little bit of Threadlocker if you'd like. Generally speaking, I do, for this application, I'm not going to worry about it.
Start both of those in before you go ahead and tighten either of them up. When we tighten these up, the torque specification is 25 foot pounds. So, now we've got our 14 millimeter, six point socket, we're going to go ahead and tighten these up. You can use a wrench, a ratchet, a socket, whatever you have for tools, but it's a 14 millimeter head. Tighten it up. Don't need to go to tight. And now we're going to torque it, 25 foot pounds.
As you can tell, it's not very much pressure. They're just very small bolts. And now our whole caliper system's mounted. All right, now we have our castle nut started. We're going to go ahead and lift up on the tie rod. Pull it down as close as we can, finger tight. If you have a wrench that ratchets, that's great. If you don't, you can wrench it. Or if you chose to, you could take off the whole caliper bracket, use a socket and ratchet, it's all completely up to you. I'm just going to make it nice and snug. That feels pretty good.
Now, what I'm going to do, is I'm going to check to make sure that the holes lined up with the castle nut. And remarkably, it looks like I did. So I'm going to go ahead and put through this little cotter pin. Push it through. Locks right in, into the castle nut. And I just wanted to mention that if you did choose to take off your caliper bracket so you can torque this outer tie rod nut, the torque specification would be 64 foot pounds.
All right, for any suspension work that you've done on the vehicle, whether it's just the tie rod, or control arm, or even a sway bar link, after you're done, it's always good habit to just go through and double check everything. Make sure you have nuts and cotter pins if that's what needs to be on it to hold it down. Everything's tightened down securely. You don't have one bolt that's sticking out quite a bit, because maybe somebody called you away from your job, or your wife called, or whatever it might be. It's easy to be distracted. Safety first is the number one concern at 1A Auto. And we just want to make everybody's safe on the road.
You can do it yourself, and I want to show you how. All right, now it's time to get the wheel up on here. Roll it up to your leg, or your knee. Never lift with your back unless you have to. You really shouldn't have to most times. Go ahead and grab a lug nut. We're going to start one on. Get it lined up. Now that we've got our wheel on the ground, you don't want all your pressure of your vehicle on it, because if this isn't tightened down snug enough, you could off kilter your wheel, and even though you're thinking you're torquing it down to the 76 foot pounds it's specified to be, it might not be.
So, with the wheel gently on the ground, to the point where it can't spin on you, you're just going to start with one, and you're going to go in a crisscross pattern with your 21 millimeter socket to 76 foot pounds. One click, crisscross, make a star. If you're feeling up to it, let's go around one more time. One, two, three, four, five. This puppy's all torqued up. Good to go.
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