Ryan: These Teraflex Sport Front Lower and Rear Upper Fixed FlexArms for two and a half
to three inches of lift are for those of you that have a 2007 to 2018 JK with that amount
of lift that are looking for a good fixed set of control arms that are going to help
fix your caster angle and your pinion angle and just be a really strong set of control
arms that are gonna hold up really, really well and be less expensive than some of the
adjustable options out there or some of those adjustable options that also have heim joints
on them.
These are going to be a pretty easy one out of three wrenches to install on your Jeep.
A little bit of disassembly to do but we are gonna show you how to get that done in just
a second.
So, when you're looking for control arms, you're going to be looking for a variety of
different things.
Usually, you're gonna swap out your control arms because you need or want ones that are
longer and that's going to help to fix a variety of things.
As you lift your Jeep, both axles are going to be moving toward the center line of the
vehicle.
So, in order to push the axles back out and center them under the wheel wells, you'll
want some longer control arms.
Also, the length of your control arms is going to affect your pinion angle, which is the
angle of both of your drive shafts and how they relate to both your transfer case and
also the differential in the front and in the back of the Jeep and also your caster
angle up front, which is the angle of the steering knuckles and what that actually feels
like is the steering wheel re-centering itself.
So, if you're making a slow turn in a parking lot, you let off the steering wheel.
As you move forward, the steering wheel re-centers.
That's because of your caster angle and if you don't have enough caster angle, the steering
wheel won't wanna self-center and then it can actually feel like you have a little bit
of a wobble or a wander on the highway because you don't have enough caster angle.
So, in the front, caster and pinion angle are directly related.
In the back, all you're worried about, pinion.
But no matter what your reasoning is, a new set of control arms is going to help solve
those problems.
Now, an adjustable control arm or a set of adjustable control arms is going to allow
you to completely dial in the pinion and the caster angle, front and rear of your vehicle.
What this is going to be is a set of fixed control arms designed specifically for those
of you that have two and a half to three inches of lift.
So you don't have to worry about dialing them in.
You don't have to worry about making that adjustment.
You don't wanna have to make sure GM nuts stay tight so you don't have to worry about
all of that stuff.
You just bolt these in and your pinion and your caster angle are going to be set for
you.
This is also going to be a set of four, the four most important ones for setting pinion
and caster at that two and a half to three inches of lift.
Of course, the length is already preset for you and like I mentioned before, these are
going to be rubber bushings in both ends of all four of these control arms.
So, you're gonna get a nice comfortable ride, a nice quiet ride out of these control arms.
However, you're not going to get quite as much additional flex as you would get with
a heim joint.
So, as this control arm moves, it's going to wanna move in one plane up and down but
it's not gonna wanna twist and it's not gonna wanna move in the opposite plane, where a
heim joint will do a little bit of that additional motion.
So if you're doing a lot of off-roading, you want maximum articulation, you'll probably
wanna look at a heim joint.
The downside, if you wanna call it that, are that they're much more expensive.
They require a little bit more maintenance.
You have to keep them greased and eventually, they are going to wear out probably a little
bit quicker than a rubber control arm bushing like this one will.
So it really depends on what you're looking for on your Jeep.
What this set is really gonna be good for is two and a half to three inches of lift.
You do some off-roading, maybe, but and you're not worried about maximum flex and you just
want something that's going to be solid and set your pinion and your caster angle without
needing to worry about any sort of adjustability.
This kit right here is going to be an incredibly high-quality option from Teraflex.
They are going to come in at right around that $400 mark which I think is really fair
for a set of four control arms like this.
It's going to be a great option for you if you are looking for an easy solution to setting
your caster and your pinion angle.
So, this is going to be a one out of three wrenches for the installation.
Let's show you how to do it.
Speaker 1: Tools required for this installation: a pry bar, a breaker bar, a 21-millimeter
wrench, a half-inch drive with an extension, a 21-millimeter socket, ball peen hammer,
a ratchet strap's extremely helpful to get that axle back into place, a half-inch gun
to get those bolts and nuts out, then I use this air ratchet to help get those bolts back
in.
All right.
So, as you can see, we have our Jeep up on the lift.
All of our wheels and tires off and I actually have the axles supported with a couple of
pull jacks.
Now I have a breaker bar with a 21-millimeter socket.
I'm going to attack my upper control arm bolts first just to break these free because I know
that they've been in for a while.
All right.
So now that that one's nice and loose, give another little turn on it.
We can attack our lower bolt for our upper control arm.
All right.
So this is the lower bolt for your upper control arm.
Again, I'm going to use my breaker bar just to get things moving.
Make sure it's on there nice and square.
All right.
And you can see that tab for the nut starting to move.
Once it moves to the forward-most position, that's when the bolt will actually start loosening
up and once you can get it loose enough that you can get a socket in there for the ratchet,
we'll switch off our tooling.
All right.
So let's bring our socket into place now and get this out the rest of the way.
So I wanted to take a second and just show you the tab nut right here.
So this actually is inside of your frame rail and that is what the bolt attaches to.
So this is not going to come out of the frame rail.
It will maybe fall out a little bit but when we bring our new upper control arm in place,
we'll have to use two hands, position that and also run our bolt through and try to capture
that nut on the back.
So let's go ahead and get this bolt out the rest of the way.
So there's that nut.
Let's get our control arm out of here.
So let's go ahead and get this new rear upper control arm in place.
We're gonna start in the front.
Just get that captured nut set.
I'm gonna put my bolt through and start to find the tab or this rests then I'm gonna
start threading my bolt just like that.
So let's snug that up.
So we're just gonna snug that up.
We'll get our final torque when the vehicles down on the ground at ride height.
All right, guys.
Now moving on to the lower part of the upper control arm, we're gonna position this into
place and it's important to note, I do have a jack stand on the pinion right now and that's
to help me find and locate that hole.
So with the jack in place and down a little bit, right there, and we are reusing the factory
hardware with that captured nut on the back side.
Start that.
The socket wrench.
Again, we're just gonna snug these up and then once the vehicle is down on the ground
and at ride height, we can give them the final torque.
And Teraflex lists all the torque readings on their instructions.
That's very nice.
So let's tighten up this front one as well.
All right.
So all the steps you just saw, we're gonna repeat on the driver's side to get that upper
control arm in.
All right.
Moving on to the front, you can see that we have our wheels and tires off.
We also have the axle supported with a couple pull jacks.
Now, in my hand, I have my half-inch air gun with a 21-millimeter socket and my 21-millimeter
wrench.
It's the same type of hardware up front except for, we don't have captured nuts.
So I'm gonna go ahead and put my 21-millimeter wrench over here and my 21-millimeter socket
on my half-inch impact here and just loosen it up.
All right.
Moving on to the front of our lower control arm, it's the same deal, 21-millimeter bolt
and nut.
We're gonna loosen this up and not remove it just yet.
All right.
Now we're gonna be removing the bolts holding in our upper control arms up front here.
I already did loosen up the ones on our driver's side.
So, I do have the nut on here, just a few threads just to protect the end of that bolt.
Let's go ahead and just give this a little tap.
All right.
We're gonna take the nut off the rest of the way now.
All right.
So let's separate the bottom of our control arm here from the axle.
Just use a pry bar here.
All right.
Now we're gonna remove the nut and bolt for our control arm back here and just wiggle
it out of place.
All right.
With our old lower control arm out of the way, we can bring in our new Teraflex unit.
Slide that up into the place.
We are reusing our factory hardware.
We're just gonna hand-tighten this for now, swing it into place and attach it to the bottom.
So one of the issues you may run into while connecting the lower control arms to your
axle is you can notice our spring right here is actually kinked backwards and pushing the
axle towards the rear.
So what we have here is a nice ratchet strap.
We're going to wrap around our axle tube and our radiator core support right here on the
bottom.
These into each other and when I get some tension on it, you can actually watch this
spring and the axle start rotating forward.
So right around there.
We should probably be able to get our control arm back into place.
So bringing the lower control arm into place, you can see we still have a little bit to
go, but I'm just gonna give this a couple more cranks and you can watch that.
That's about good right there.
Get our bolt started.
It's a little off on that side so I'm gonna give it one more.
All right.
I can just start that with the air ratchet.
All right.
Now we're gonna repeat that on the other side.
All right.
So with our control arms in place, we have our 21-millimeter socket and wrench.
We're gonna tighten these up, get the wheels back on, get it on the ground and torque them
down.
That's gonna wrap up my install of the Teraflex Sport Front Lower and Rear Upper Fixed FlexArms,
fitting your Jeep JK with a two and a half to three inch lift.
And for all things Wrangler, keep it here at extremeterrain.com.