Replaces
Part Details
Product Features
TRQ drivetrain kits are manufactured using premium raw materials to restore original performance. Each TRQ drivetrain component is designed to be a direct, maintenance-free replacement to the stock unit. To extend the service life of your drivetrain, TRQ recommends replacing wheel hubs, bearings, and constant velocity (CV) drive axles at the same time to ensure even wear of components and improved ride comfort. All products are fit and road-tested in our Massachusetts R&D facility to ensure we deliver on our promise of Trusted Reliable Quality.
Install Tip: When replacing steering components, have a professional alignment performed afterwards. This ensures proper tracking and even tire wear.
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
Attention California Customers:
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
One of the first things you want to do is safely raise and support your vehicle by the frame so your suspension can hang. Once you've done that, take a small pry bar and we're going to take off this center cap. If you were to spin it, you're going to see a little notch in the cap. Just carefully slide this off of here. That exposes our 22-millimeter lug nuts. Remove all six. Remove your wheel. Now let's remove our 21-millimeter nut. Let's just put that nut on, just a couple threads. Now we're going to take a hammer and we're going to hit right here on the knuckle. You want to be very careful for your brake rotor.
Now that the wheel is off, we have a clear view of where we're going to start working. We're going to disconnect the electrical, this is the ABS right here, and it's very delicate. I'm just gonna come right up along here, and you're gonna see where it's supposed to be mounted to the frame. Should be pretty secure. This is missing about half of its clip, so I'll make sure I secure it in afterward. This purple right here is a little lock, it's holding it from coming separated. I like to just come right in between here, pop that up. Now we'll separate this, just take a peek, make sure you don't see any funny colors. If you were to come right down along here, we're gonna get this clip off of here as well. Just give it a little twist, lift it up, grab that ABS wire, carefully set it aside. The next thing we're going to do is remove this 10-millimeter headed bolt. The next thing we're gonna do is remove the nut that holds the upper ball joint to the knuckle. Okay. That comes right off. I'm just gonna go ahead and put it on there just a couple threads for now. Now let's use a 36-millimeter socket to remove our axle nut. Behind there, there's a washer. Go ahead and remove that as well. Let's go ahead and blast this with some penetrant.
The next thing we need to do is separate the axle from the bearing. I'm going to use this punch right here and go right in the center. You definitely don't wanna use a hammer and potentially damage the threads. The next thing we need to do is remove our mounting bolts that hold the caliper to the knuckle, use an 18-millimeter. Carefully hang your caliper, so it's putting no pressure on your flex hoses. So, now let's just double-check to make sure this upper ball joint nut is still on there a few good threads, it hasn't loosened upon us. And then we'll move down here to the lower ball joint nut. Remove that as well. Take that, and just put it on a couple threads.
Okay, so now it's gonna be time to separate the upper ball joint from the knuckle right here. Pay special attention to anything that's delicate that you don't want ruined, such as an ABS wire. Make sure that that's secure and safely out of the way. Go ahead and take your nice little hammer. And we're going to bonk right here on the knuckle itself. As you can tell it's separated, we can move along. So, now let's push down on this. Remove that nut. And carefully draw this down. Now if you're worried the knuckle with a rotor is going to be too heavy, you can go ahead and use a Torx bit right here, remove that bolt, and take the rotor right off. The problem with removing it like that is you're gonna have to clean up the mating surface between the wheel bearing and the rotor itself. So, now I'm going to take my hammer again and I'm going to come right down here and we're going to hit right on the knuckle itself until this comes down. There we are. Carefully lift up, remove the ball joint nut. Carefully lower this down, remove your knuckle.
The next thing you're going to want to do is support your lower control arm so that you're not putting maximum pressure on your front shock/strut. If you are, you can potentially damage it, because we're going to be using a hammer and we're going to hit right here on the lower ball joint to break it free.
Now to install the lower ball joint, we're gonna want to take the boot off of it first. So, I'm just going to use a nice small screwdriver, pry bar, weasel it in between. Then just kind of separate the two. Be careful not to damage the boot, of course, because we're going to be using it. The next thing we need is a ball joint kit with a cup that's going to fit right up against this lip. We're going to come right underneath, and then we're going to press this right up and in. Right along the bottom. I'm going to use a cup that looks like this, with a hole in the bottom, that's for the stud to go through. It's going to press right up against this ridge right here. Take this cup, something that's hollow enough to make sure that the top part of the ball joint can fit inside. Put it right over the top. Now we're going to take our ball joint C-clamp, put it right over the top, bottom it out. Just check to make sure that the cup is centered to approximately where the ball joints going to be.
Now we're going to tighten this up. As we do that, we want to check this ridge and make sure it matches up directly along this control arm. As you can tell, the ball joint ridge is directly against the control arm right here. Before I release any pressure, I'm just going to give the control arm a couple light bonks with my hammer, just for a little bit of vibration to help make sure this is seated securely. That should be pretty great. Carefully remove your tool. Make sure you install your clamp. To do that, just use these little pliers right here. They fit inside the holes, and then you can spread it. Slide it right over. Make sure it's sitting inside the roof all the way around. If it isn't, just work at it until it is. Now we're going to install our boot. Just carefully bring it up here. I like to try to start it on one side, so I'll go on the side farthest away from me. Then I'll use some pliers and just kind of roll the lip right on. Obviously, be careful not to poke any holes in the boot. Inspect it for any damage. Make sure that it's completely secured. This looks perfect.
Go ahead and take your knuckle. I'm going to start it on the axle a little bit, then slide it over the lower ball joint stud. Lift it up. Kink it to the side and start on that lower ball joint nut. Wiggle the axle around. Should slide right in. Now we're going to use a bar, we're going to pull this upper ball joint down into here. Get the nut, go ahead and start it on there. Just going to take my bar, and try to hold pressure on the lower ball joint to the knuckle. And then we're going to go ahead and try to tighten it up. So, now you'd want to torque this to 37-foot-pounds. If for some reason you can't get your torque wrench in there, like I can't, I would just continue with my wrench and make sure it's nice and tight. [vocalization]. Perfect.
Now it's time to torque up that lower ball joint nut as well. Torque it to 37-foot-pounds. Now what we want to do is make sure that our slot is lined up with the hole that goes through the ball joint stud, so we can make sure we install our cotter pin. Go ahead and slide that through. If for some reason yours is not lined up when you torqued it, you need to continue tightening, not loosening, until it's lined up with the next available slot. Go ahead and peen that over and lock it in. All right. So, now it's gonna be time to get the caliper on here. Just go ahead and slide it right over the rotor. Now we're gonna line up those bolt holes. I like to use some red threadlocker on these bolts. And start them in there. Okay. Let's bottom them out. Now let's go ahead and torque these 248-foot-pounds. Now we'll just go ahead and take that tie rod end, put right through the knuckle. Take your nut, start it on there. We're gonna bottom it out. Now you're gonna torque this to 44-foot-pounds. That's torqued.
The next thing we're gonna do is look to see if we can find the hole in the stud of the tie rod and match it with the next corresponding slot on the tie rod stud nut. This doesn't line up, so what I need to do now is I need to continue tightening until it does. I can see right through. I'm going to grab that locking cotter pin and install it. Slide that right on through and just peen it over. There's no way that this nut can come loose. Now it's going to be time to get the washer with the axle nut on there. Go ahead and slide the pair on. Go ahead and use your 36-millimeter socket, bottom it out, and then we'll torque it. Just gonna put a little splash of never-seize in here, I've got my mounting bolt. Let's use our 10-millimeter and snug it up. Make sure it's fully secured, make sure there's nothing binding your flex hose for your brakes are not twisted in any way.
Now it's time to get our ABS wire re-secured. Let's go ahead and put it in right here. Make sure it cannot come loose. If this can hang around and move around, it could potentially get damaged. Go ahead and connect this in now. Listen for a click, give it a tug. Go ahead and slide in your lock. Now we're going to take our mounting hardware here and just slide it right down in there. It's just a little push clip. Give it a nice tug, make sure it's definitely secured.
So, of course, next, you'd want to go ahead and torque down this nut right here. And that's going to be torqued to 177-foot-pounds. You can do that several ways. If you were to just do it like this, what you're going to notice is it just keeps spinning. If that was the case, what you would do is you can use a pry bar coming straight through these lug studs like this down to the ground. And so it holds it from spinning on you and then you would torque it. If you didn't want to go through the process doing that you can go ahead and throw the wheel up on there and then go through the center hole, which is the way that I'm going to do it.
We'll grab those lug nuts, start them all on there. Let's bottom these out. Now we'll bring it down to the ground and we'll make it so the wheel is just barely touching enough so the wheel can't spin. It's time to torque down this axle nut, 177-foot pounds like I said. Torqued. Now let's do the lug nuts,140-foot-pounds. Go crisscross. Torqued. Now it's gonna be time to get the center cover on. Before you go ahead and pound it on there, just take a look at the back, you're going to see something that looks a lot like a valve stem. Line it up. It's gonna go pretty much just like this. Light bonk, and then, of course, clean up your wheel, make it look nice and pretty and take it for a road test.
Tools used
Tools used
Tools used
Tools used
One of the first things you want to do is safely raise and support your vehicle by the frame, so your suspension can hang. Once you've done that, take a small pry bar, and we're going to take off this center cap. If you were to spin it, you're going to see a little notch in the cap. Just carefully slide this off of here. That exposes our 22-millimeter lug nuts. Remove all six. Remove your wheel.
All right. So, before we get too much further, I just want to make sure that you understand that it's always a great idea to do your sway bar links as a pair. We're going to use a 15-millimeter wrench up on top on this nut right here, and another 15-millimeter down here. We'll remove the whole shaft, and pull this right out. You can see it's starting to come unthreaded. Little rubber bushing, you want to pop that off of there.
Now, this shaft right here is going to be stuck inside the plastic unit there. I'm going to spray a little bit of penetrant, and then I'm going to see if I can drive this down. All right. As you can see, it was very rusted. I'll grab that with some pliers and continue. So, now I'm just going to take my pry bar. I want to come right in between here, and I can lift up and remove this centerpiece.
The next thing we want to do is unscrew our sway bar link, so it all comes apart like this. We're going to make sure we have our bolt. We have one of our washers and one of our bushings with a little piton facing up. Now, I'm going to come down through this lower control arm. Start it in like this. I'm going to take another one of these rubber bushings, and now I'm going to put that little piton area facing down towards the control arm. That's going to make it so it fits right in. That's great. Now, you need another one of those washers. Put that facing down. Put in your spacer. Another metal washer facing up. We're going to take our rubber bushing with the piton facing up, and that's going to face right up against towards this sway bar right here. Now, just bring this down just a teeny bit. I'm going to grab that pry bar, lift this up, and I'm going to slide this into where our sway bar hole is. Line that up. Set it down. Drive my bolt up through. We've got our rubber bushing with the piton facing down towards the sway bar metal. And then, of course, our nut. There we are.
Now, it's going to be time to tighten this up. It's important to remember, as you're tightening up the nut with the bolt, that as these come squishing down, you don't want them to flatten out like a pancake. You just want it so that the bushings are touching up against the metal areas of the control arm and the sway bar itself. So, I can see that they're touching all the way around. I'm just going to go a teeny bit more here. I'm going to put my pinky right up against it. And as you can tell, the amount of the shaft that's sticking up is approximately the width of my pinky. That should be pretty good right there. I can tell that there's no movement that's going to happen between the bushings and the bar, or the bushings in the lower control arm, and they're definitely not pancaked down.
We'll grab those lug nuts. Start them all on there. Let's bottom these out. Now, we'll bring it down to the ground, and we'll make it so the wheel is just barely touching enough, so the wheel can't spin. Now, let's do the lug nuts, 140 foot-pounds. Go crisscross. Torqued.
Now, it's going to be time to get the center cover on. Before you go ahead and pound it on there, just take a look at the back, you're going to see something that looks a lot like a valve stem. Line it up. It's going to go pretty much just like this. Light bonk and then, of course, clean up your wheel, make it look nice and pretty, and take it for a road test.
Tools used
Tools used
Tools used
One of the first things you wanna do is safely raise and support your vehicle by the frame so your suspension can hang. Once you've done that, take a small pry bar, and we're gonna take off this center cap. If you were to spin it, you're gonna see a little notch in the cap. Carefully slide this off of here. That exposes our 22-millimeter lug nuts. Remove all six. Remove your wheel.
Now that we have the wheel off, we have a clear view of our tie rod area. One of the first things we're gonna do is break free this jam nut right here. I like to use a nice, long pair of pliers like this. You could also use a wrench. Right on here like that. Once it turns like this, that means it broke free from the outer tie rod end, and now you'll be able to continue. Now let's remove our 21-millimeter nut. Let's just put that nut on, just a couple threads. Now we're gonna take a hammer, and we're gonna hit right here on the knuckle. You wanna be very careful for your brake rotor.
The next thing we're gonna do is remove our outer tie rod end, and as you screw if off, just count those threads. One, two, and so on. All right. Go ahead and write that number down. Now it's time to install the outer tie rod end. Make sure you put it in the same amount of threads that you did to take it off. One, two, three, and so on. Get that nut off of there. Okay. So now with it sitting as it is, you just wanna kind of go to the front of the vehicle and make sure that both wheels are aiming straight ahead at this point. Now that everything looks like it's going in a nice and straight line, go ahead and bring that jam nut so it's hitting up against the outer tie rod end. It's good right there. Let's go ahead and grab some pliers.
The next thing we're gonna do is take a nice wrench, 1-inch will work perfectly, and we're gonna grab right onto this area on the outer tie rod end, and then we'll take our nice, long pliers and go ahead and snug up this jam nut. Okay. That feels good. Go ahead and wiggle that tie rod around a little bit. Make sure it's facing straight up and down. This looks good. Now let's go ahead and snug this up. We're gonna bottom it out. Now you're gonna torque this to 44-foot-pounds. That's torqued. The next thing we're gonna do is look to see if we can find the hole in the stud of the tie rod, and match it with the next corresponding slot on the tie rod stud nut. This doesn't line up, so what I need to do now is I need to continue tightening until it does. I can see right through. I'm gonna grab that locking cotter pin and install it. Slide that right on through. Then just peen it over. There's no way that this nut can come loose.
We'll grab those lug nuts, start them all on there. Let's bottom these out. Now we'll bring it down to the ground, and we'll make it so the wheel is just barely touching enough so the wheel can't spin. Now let's do the lug nuts, 140-foot-pounds. Go crisscross. Torqued.
Now it's gonna be time to get the center cover on. Before you go ahead and pound it on there, just take a look at the back. You're gonna see something that looks a lot like a valve stem. Line it up. It's gonna go pretty much just like this. Light bonk. And then, of course, clean up your wheel, make it look nice and pretty, and take it for a road test.
Tools used
One of the first things you want to do is safely raise and support your vehicle by the frame, so your suspension can hang. Once you've done that, take a small pry bar, and we're going to take off this center cap. If you were to spin it, you're going to see a little notch in the cap. Just carefully slide this off of here. That exposes our 22-millimeter lug nuts. Remove all six. Remove your wheel. Now, to remove our 21-millimeter nut. Let's just put that nut on just a couple threads. Now, we're going to take a hammer, and we're going to hit right here on the knuckle. You want to be very careful for your brake rotor.
Now, that the wheel is off, we have a clear view of where we're going to start working. We're going to disconnect the electrical. This is the ABS right here, and it's very delicate. I'm just going to come right up along here, and you're going to see where it's...well, where it's supposed to be mounted to the frame. Should be pretty secure. This is missing about half of its clip, so I'll make sure I secure it in afterward. This purple right here is a little lock. It's holding it from becoming separated. I like to just come right in between here. Pop that up. Now, we'll separate this. Just take a peek. Make sure you don't see any funny colors. If you were to come right down along here, we're going to get this clip off of here as well. Just give it a little twist. Lift it up. Grab that ABS wire. Carefully set it aside.
The next thing we're going to do is remove this 10-millimeter headed bolt. So, just make sure everything is nice and clear from your upper control arm. We're going to go ahead and take out this nut right here. Let's just go ahead and take that upper ball joint nut, and just start it on there just a couple threads. The next thing we're going to do is come right up here with our pickle fork, which is this tool right here, right up along the top. And then I'm going to use my hammer, and I'm going to separate the ball joint from the knuckle. Just be careful because it will want to pull away, and it could put a tug on your axle. I'm just going to carefully rest this away. If you wanted to, you can secure it with something such as a bungee cord. Okay. Just make sure we have the ABS wire, so it's not getting a tug. It's not putting a tug on the axle in any way. The next thing we're going to do is remove the bolts that go from right here through to the other side. I like to use a 21-millimeter on the inside area, and then you'd use a 21-millimeter on the outer portion as well to remove the nut. Leave that one in like that for now. Do the same to the other side. Let's go ahead and take the bolts out.
Outer. Go ahead grab onto that control arm. There it is, friends. Now, it's a good idea to just make sure that this area of your cam bolts are nice and clean, and then we're just going to hit it with some copper Never-Seez here, and that's going to help the alignment professional down the line.
Now, it's going to be time to install your brand new control arm. One of the first things that you want to do with that control arm is make sure that you have the same shape. As you'll notice, this isn't a perfect V. If you were to see that the slanted end on this side was slanted on the other side for some reason, that means you have the wrong side of the vehicle. Once you know you have the right side, go ahead and put it up in here. Might require a couple light bonks just to kind of get it in there. I like to use a rubber mallet for that. Just get it so it's at least lined up enough to be able to line up the bolt and get it started. Let's go ahead and see if we can get this bolt started in here. Feels like it's starting to want to go in. Just have to try to get the right angle with the control arm. Okay. Before you go ahead and push it in all the way, you need to make sure that you have your adjuster so it's facing up and inside of the groove. We have a little piton that comes out. And usually, when I put these in, I'll get them both started, and then I'll kind of put these back to exactly where I got them from. And then the alignment professional can, of course, align it from there.
Let's go ahead and get this back on there. As you can tell, the originals came with this little plastic in there. You can go ahead and pop that out of there if you want to. I'm going to leave it in though because that's going to tell me exactly where this needs to be when it comes to lining it up. Just turn the bolt side until it lines up where it needs to be. Go ahead and start it on there. We'll do the same to the other side.
Now, before we go ahead and tighten these up, it's important to remember that you don't want your control arm sitting down like this when you tighten it up. Essentially, the way that you want the control arm to be, when it's tight, is as if the vehicle was sitting on the ground right now. With all the weight of the vehicle on this wheel, it would of course be having this sitting almost parallel to the ground, so that's where we're going to go. I'm just going to slide this in there, and now I'll realign everything here, and then we'll snug it up. Okay, that bottomed out. We'll torque it to manufacturer's specifications in one minute. Now, that both of those are snug, we can take this out, and we'll torque these to 140 foot-pounds. So, now we'll just get this, so we can get the upper ball joint stud in here. You're going to want a pry bar, so you can pry down on this. So, I'll grab that real quick. Let's go ahead and pry this down, so we can start the nut in there.
Let's go ahead and bottom this out. Now, the torque for this should be 37 foot-pounds. Obviously, as you can tell by the limited amount of space in between the axle and the nut, we're not going to be able to get a torque wrench in there. Thirty-seven foot-pounds isn't very much just to say. Take a nice long wrench. Put it on there. Give it a couple nice tugs. Once you're sure that it's tight, now you're going to want to take a peek at that stud for the ball joint, and the nut itself, to see if you have a slot lined up with the hole. If you don't, you need to continue tightening, not loosening, until you get to the next hole.
Go ahead and peen over that cotter pin, so it locks in the nut. There's no way that it can loosen up on its own. Let's go ahead and get this little grease fitting in there. Let's go ahead and pump some grease into this. I'm just going to put a little splash of Never-Seez in here. I've got my mounting bolt. Let's use our 10-millimeter and snug it up. Make sure it's fully secured. Make sure there's nothing binding your flex hose for your breaks are not twisted in any way.
Now, it's time to get our ABS wire resecured. Let's go ahead and put it in right here. Make sure it cannot come loose. If this can hang around and move around, it could potentially get damaged. Go ahead and connect this in now. Listen for a click. Give it a tug. Go ahead and slide in your lock. Now, we're going to take our mounting hardware here and just slide it right down in it. It's just a little push clip. Give it a nice tug. Make sure it's definitely secured.
So, of course, next, you'd want to go ahead and torque down this nut right here, and that's going to be torqued to 177 foot-pounds. You can do that several ways. If you were to just do it like this, what you're going to notice is it just keeps spinning. If that was the case, what you would do is you can use a pry bar coming straight through these lug studs like this down to the ground. And so, it holds it from spinning on you, and then you would torque it. If you didn't want to go through the process doing that, you can go ahead and throw the wheel up on there, and then go through the center hole, which is the way that I'm going to do it.
We'll grab those lug nuts. Start them all on there. Let's bottom these out. Now, we'll bring it down to the ground, and we'll make it so the wheel is just barely touching enough, so the wheel can't spin. It's time to torque down this axle nut 177 foot-pounds like I said. Torqued. Now, let's do the lug nuts 140 foot-pounds. Go crisscross. Torqued.
Now, it's going to be time to get the center cover on. Before you go ahead and pound it on there, just take a look at the back. You're going to see something that looks a lot like a valve stem. Line it up. It's going to go pretty much just like this. Light bonk and then, of course, clean up your wheel, make it look nice and pretty, and take it for a road test.
Tools used
First, we're gonna take the center cap off. I'm gonna use a pry bar. If you don't wanna scratch the wheel, just use a rag. Wrap the pry bar around the rag and slide it out. Use a 22-millimeter socket to take the lug nuts off. Take the wheel off. I'm gonna take the brake caliper off with the bracket. I'm gonna use an 18-millimeter socket and take these bracket bolts out.
Slide this out. Use a brake caliper hanger. There you go. Make sure there's no tension on the brake hose. Now, I'm gonna take the screw out. I'm gonna use a T30 socket. Grab the rotor and slide it off. Take this nut off, use a 36-millimeter socket. And take the washer off. And just make sure that the axle is loose from the hub. You can tap that with a hammer. You should use a punch so that you don't ruin the splines on the axle.
Now, I'm gonna take this ABS harness off of here and use a trim tool, just get underneath here. Disconnect it here. There's a little retainer right there. You can use a pocket screwdriver. There we go. And just push it down, disconnect it. Then you can do the same right here. Slide that up. And then there's another retainer right here, and then just pry it out just like that. If you can squeeze those tabs with some needle-nose pliers, that works too. And that harness is good right there.
Now, the housing of the hub has three holes that are bolted on, so you need to take those bolts out. Those are on the backside of the knuckle. I'm gonna take these bolts out. I'm gonna use a 15-millimeter socket. And there's another one right here. Take those out. Okay. Then just grab the hub and slide it out. And if it doesn't come out that easy, you can take a hammer and just tap it from the backside or even a slide hammer and take the shield off. I'm just gonna take a wire brush to just clean up some of the rust and just use a little anti-seize so it doesn't seize up in there, doesn't rust up in there. Just use a little thin coat on the surface.
And take the dust shield. Make sure you have the ABS wire go through the dust shield first. Line that up and slide it in position. And take the three bolts and get those started. And then I'll take a torque wrench and torque these bolts to 133-foot pounds. There we go. Put the washer back on, put the nut on. Then tighten up the nut and torque it.
I'm gonna use a pry bar in between the lugs to prevent the hub from spinning and torque this nut to 177-foot pounds. It'll check that. There we go. And take the wiring harness and put this back in position, lock it in place. Looks good. Reconnect the connector and push down on the lock and push back in place. Looks good. Just take a little anti-seize and just put a thin coat on just to prevent future rust.
Take the rotor, line it up. Line the hole up with the threaded hole and put the screw in, and just snug it up. It's good. And take the caliper and slide it off the hanger, and slide it over the rotor. Take the bolts. You can put some thread-locking compound on the bolts and get these started. I'm gonna tighten these bolts to 148-foot pounds. Put the wheel back on and the lug nuts.
Now, I'm gonna torque these lug nuts to 140-foot pounds. I'm gonna do it in a cross pattern so it tightens the wheel down evenly. And I'll just go around again and double-check. You're good. Center cap, put it back on. Because we pulled the caliper off, there's gonna be a little air gap between the rotor and the brake pads so just pump the brakes. Make sure you get rid of that air gap and you should be good to go.
Tools used
Tools used
One of the first things we need to do is safely raise and support the vehicle, so the wheel is off the ground. Let's remove our 22-millimeter lug nuts. Remove your wheel.
Now that the wheel's off of here, we have a clear view of the sway bar link. What you're going to notice is, up along the top, it has a strange-looking nut. It's very thin. It's going to be hard to grab onto. I'm going to use a pair of locking pliers to try to grab onto it. Using my 15-millimeter socket, I'm going to come down from the bottom here. Now I'm going to use my 14-millimeter socket down along the bottom here, see if we can get this to come apart. Looks like it's starting to turn.
Okay. So, for us, the outer sheath on this broke free from the bolt itself that's supposed to be running through the center, so I'm just going to go ahead and spray this down with some penetrant, let that soak down and through there. Sometimes, what happens is, is this outer portion will actually freeze or get stuck onto the bolt. If that's the case, what you would either want to do is grab onto the outer portion with some locking pliers, and then try to spin out that bolt. If that doesn't work, you might have to just cut the bolt itself. There's the bolt. Let's get all this out of here. Awesome.
So, now, assuming you're doing the sway bar links as a pair, now is the best time to go ahead and start doing the other side as well. Okay. Once you have both sides out, you should be able to move the bar around a little bit at this point. We're going to grab our new sway bar links. We take off the nut, take off the washer and the bushing, the washer and the bushing, and then, of course, the sheath, washer and bushing again, and we're going to leave it just like this.
Now, as we come up, okay, coming up from under the control arm, we still have the bolt with the washer and the bushing. Now we're going to take our bushing with our washer, put that facing down and towards the control arm. Grab your spacer, put that on there. We're going to push this up a little bit further. Now you're going to go washer, facing up, bushing. Get it underneath that sway bar. Bring it up. Bushing again.
If you were to look at these bushings, you can tell that they have like a rounded area, and then they have this area right here with a little like a piton. The piton is going to be going either towards the control arm or towards the sway bar. Set that on there, this one right here, and then, of course, our locking nut. I like to use a little thread locker on these.
I'm just going to use my 14-millimeter wrench, and of course, my ratchet underneath, and I'm going to start snugging it up. As I snug it, I want to be watching these bushings. What I want to see is the bushing touching up against the bar, on both sides of course. And, of course, down by the control arm there, we want those bushings to be touching up against it as well. We don't necessarily want to continue tightening, though, until the point where they seem like they're getting squished down and even pancaking out. So, let's just snug them up so they're all touching at least, and then we'll continue on.
Okay. So, this looks great. As you can tell, all of my bushings are touching exactly where they need to be touching. And you're also going to notice that I didn't continue tightening until they flattened out, like I had said before. This looks pretty great, so I'm just going to take a quick measurement of it. It looks like it's approximately the width of my thumb, personally, so I'm going to make sure that I go approximately the same on the other side of the vehicle.
Okay. Now it's going to be time to get the wheel up on here. Slide it on. Now we'll get the lug nuts on here, we'll bottom them out, and then we'll torque them to manufacturer specifications. Let's torque these lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds. Torqued.
Tools used
Tools used
One of the first things you want to do is safely raise and support your vehicle by the frame, so your suspension can hang. Once you've done that, take a small pry bar, and we're going to take off this center cap. If you were to spin it, you're going to see a little notch in the cap. Just carefully slide this off of here. That exposes our 22-millimeter lug nuts. Remove all six. Remove your wheel.
Now, that we have the wheel off, we have a clear view of our tie rod area. One of the first things we're going to do is break free this jam nut right here. I like to use a nice long pair of pliers like this. You could also use a wrench right on here like that. Once it turns like this, that means it broke free from the outer tie rod end, and now you'll be able to continue. Now, let's remove our 21-millimeter nut. Let's just put that nut on just a couple threads. Now, we're going to take a hammer and we're going to hit right here on the knuckle. You want to be very careful for your brake rotor. The next thing we're going to do is remove our outer tie rod end, and as you screw it off, just count those threads, one, two, and so on. All right, go ahead and write that number down. The next thing I would do is go ahead and blast this area with some penetrant again. Just for good measure, use some locking pliers. Hold on to the inner tie rod end, and then we're going to use a 24-millimeter socket and remove this. Now, if you were to look at this rubber boot right here, which is called your bellows boot, at this end, closest to the inner tie rod end shaft, you're going to have a little clip. Go ahead and grab that with some long-nose pliers.
Go right along the inner tie rod end. Grab. Squeeze. Draw it away. Remove it. Now, if you were to follow those bellows boot in, you're going to look to find a clamp that's holding the bellows boot to the power steering rack. Right along the frame and the boot, you're going to see a little nub right there. That's the area that the clamp is holding on by. What I like to do is I like to take a nice long pry bar, and I'll put the tip up against it, and come out just like this. And then I'm going to give it a couple loving blocks with a hammer and try to break it free.
Take my pry bar. Put it right up against that clip. Be careful not to damage your boot. One bonk. Set you free. That's what it looks like, friends. Now, we're just going to grab that inner tie rod boot. Go ahead and try to give it a twist to break it free, and then just give it a couple yanks. Go ahead and draw it right off of here. Now, is a great time to inspect the boot. Make sure it's not damaged in any way. This looks great.
The next thing we need to do is grab onto this portion of the inner tie rod end. You can either do that with a inner tie rod end tool, which overall will probably have a little clamp that goes over it. A little piece. You can put an extension with a 3/8 ratchet. You also have a different inner tie rod end tool that will have a nice long tube that will slide over with an adapter. Me personally, I love my nice long pliers. They're easy. Turn the wheel all the way to the left, so you can get to this. If you don't, you'll be inside here. Once you have it turned, go ahead and grab onto it. Turn it counterclockwise and break it free. Let's go ahead and remove that. There it is, friends.
The next thing I always like to do is just clean up the area. That looks pretty decent just like that. Make sure that there's nothing in the threads that's going to cause an issue. Now, it's going to be time to install our inner tie rod end. If you want to use a little bit of threadlocker, we'll call it your prerogative. I like to thread it in by hand. Okay. That's as tight as it's going to go. Now, I'm just going to go ahead and continue on by tightening it up. At this point with it being bottomed out, you really don't want to go too much further because if you apply too much pressure, you'll twist the inner portion of the rack, which will cause an issue. Okay. Just give it a little bit. That's it right there. Now, what you're going to notice is your inner tie rod end is going to come with this nice little package of grease. Go ahead and tear open a little corner of it, and then we're going to take the grease and go right along the ball and socket area, which is this area right here. Just put it in. Wiggle it around. This is going to help keep moisture out of there, and it's going to help keep it well lubricated for a long period of time. I like to put a little bit of grease right along her, right where this line is, that's where the bellows boot clamp is going to be. So, let's get this jam nut off of here.
The next thing we're going to do is go ahead and straighten out the wheel, so it's back to its original area. We're going to take our bellows boot, just like this, and I like to use a nice wire tie, and I'm just going to go right along it. Get it started on there. I'll leave it pretty loose at this point, but I'm going to trim off some of the slack just so I can get inside this area. Now, we're just going to take that inner tie rod end boot. Slide it right on over. Okay. It got to the grease. I'm just going to work it around a little bit. By having grease right here, that's going to make it so when it comes time for the alignment and they're turning this, it's going to turn easy-peasy, and your alignment professional is going to be very happy. Go ahead and slide it over the power steering rack down here. Once you're sure it's completely seated all the way around, go ahead and snug up that wire tie with some pliers, and then trim off the excess.
Now, it's going to be time to get this clamp back on there. Go ahead and carefully squeeze on it. Just watch your fingers. It is spring metal or spring steel. Slide it right on over. Make sure it's sitting flush all the way around, not hanging off anywhere, and the boot is definitely secured to the inner tie rod end. This is going to prevent moisture from getting in. Next, we'll take some copper Never-Seez and go right along the threaded area here. Go ahead and grab that jam nut. Get a nice new one.
Now, it's time to install the outer tie rod end. Make sure you put it in the same amount of threads that you did to take it off, one, two, three, and so on. Take that nut off of there. Okay. So, now with it sitting as it is, you just want to kind of go to the front of the vehicle, and make sure that both wheels are aiming straight ahead at this point.
Now, that everything looks like it's going in a nice and straight line, go ahead and bring that jam nut, so it's hitting up against the outer tie rod end. That's good right there. Let's go ahead and grab some pliers. The next thing we're going to do is take a nice wrench, 1-inch will work perfectly, and we're going to grab right onto this area on the outer tie rod end. And then we'll take our nice long pliers and go ahead and snug up this jam nut. Okay. That feels good. Go ahead and wiggle that tie rod around a little bit. Make sure it's facing straight up and down. This looks good. Now, let's go ahead and snug this up.
We're going to bottom it out. Now, you're going to torque this to 44 foot-pounds. That's torqued. The next thing we're going to do is look to see if we can find the hole in the stud of the tie rod, and match it with the next corresponding slot on the tie rod stud nut. This doesn't line up, so what I need to do now is I need to continue tightening until it does. I can see right through. I'm going to grab that locking cotter pin and install it. Slide that right on through. And just peen it over. There's no way that this nut can come loose.
We'll grab those lug nuts. Start them all on there. Let's bottom these out. Now, we'll bring it down to the ground, and we'll make it so the wheel is just barely touching enough so the wheel can't spin. Now, let's do the lug nuts, 140 foot-pounds. Go crisscross. Torqued. Now, it's going to be time to get the center cover on. Before you go ahead and pound it on there, just take a look at the back. You're going to see something that looks a lot like a valve stem. Line it up. It's going to go pretty much just like this. Light bonk and then, of course, clean up your wheel, make it look nice and pretty, and take it for a road test.
Tools used
