It’s completely broken off.
This is the arm that’s broken.
As far as getting that bolt off, it’s pretty rusted on there.
As you can kind of see there’s a whole lot of rust underneath this vehicle.
So basically what I have is I have the two arms, the two wrenches, one on either side.
They are both 21 millimeters.
I have this one connected to that bolt right there where it’s just kind of just leaning
against the top.
And so as I spin this one, that one holds the other bolt steady.
As I move this one you can see they both move.
To get them both started, I attached a wrench to the other end of this one to kind of give
me more leverage on the whole thing.
I’ll see if I can get a good shot of that.
If you take two wrenches and put them like this, it gives you one extra-freaking-long
wrench.
So I got like probably a little more than almost 3 feet of wrench there that I can put
a whole lot of torque on the end of that bolt.
Who needs power tools, right?
Alright, same concept for the other side.
Just get one bolt on, one wrench on one side, one wrench on the other and just kind of twist
them off using the same technique.
Get your two wrenches attached to each other, one wrench propped up against like the axle
or something like that.
What I’m doing right now is I’ve got it pretty much loosened up so I’m just holding
both wrenches and then twisting them opposite directions to kind of get the bolt off the
rest of the way.
Alright so now we’re taking out the upper control on this one.
It’s just as broken as the other one, kind of rusted all the way through.
So I got my one 15 millimeter wrench attached to that end.
Same little, you know, contraption to make the wrench longer.
You can see as I pull on the bottom I barely get some play in there.
There we go.
Ingenuity at its finest.
Ok so right now working off the upper control arm.
It’s relatively simple.
Same concept.
Just a metal rod with a bushing in it.
This is the one I’m taking apart right now, one that’s been snapped off.
So you can see right there, there’s a star bolt on the side, it’s using one of these
bits to get it off.
This one right here is a T50 I believe.
Yep it’s a T50.
And then the nut on the other side is a 15.
So just put the wrench on one end and the other end.
I’m being careful with the T50 bolt so I’m not really ratcheting from that end, I’m
just kind of holding it tight with the wrench.
That’s about it with this one.
For the top control arm on the passenger side, inside the wheel well there’s a hole right
there with a bolt in it.
That bolt is a 15 millimeter and it is connected to the top control arm.
There’s that guy.
It’s up in there.
So it’s a 15 on both sides it looks like.
Ok, we have a pretty close up shot here.
Anyway, I’m trying to install the new arm here underneath the jeep on the back axle.
What I’ve done is the arm itself is, because the old arm was completely broken in half,
the jeep isn’t completely in alignment.
So I can’t line up that hole.
It was a little worse before, but I rigged this contraption up where I took one of these
ties and wrapped it around the axle and then put the other end on the frame here.
Probably not the smartest idea having it next to my jack stand, but I felt like it’s pretty
solid.
Anyway every time I click this…I’ll show you when I click it…it lines up.
There we go.
So now I’m able to put the bolt in this end.
And the other bolt’s already in the other end.
So that’s how to realign it and get the holes all together.
Simplest way.
Ok so when doing this I would suggest keeping one side of the arms on the vehicle, that
way you can always have a reference point.
When you’re putting the arm in on the bushing, there are two sides to it.
There’s the one side with the little lip right here, and then the other side without
a lip over here on this side.
The lip always goes toward the inside of the vehicle.
When you’re doing the upper arm it has a bracket on it and the bracket always goes
to the inside of the vehicle.
So keep that in mind.
And as far as the bolt goes, with a little bit of wiggling around and prying you can
get that thing all the way in there.
So the bolt’s in.
Just make sure that the nut is on the outside of the vehicle and the actual bolt head is
on the inside.
What I’m doing is I’m just barely putting the nut on the other side of these bolts.
So I have a little bit of play room if I need to adjust anything for the top bar.
So right now I’m going to go ahead and do the other bottom bracket and then do the top
two after the bottom ones are done.
Cashing into the sunset.
Anyway, with the back bar I still need to use the same tie down contraption to get the
axle twisted in the right way.
The back bolt of the nut is still facing the outside of the vehicle but with the top bolt
the nut goes on the inside cuz the exhaust here gets in the way of the bolt sliding in.
Anyway, it’s pretty simple other than getting the axle in the right spot to get that bolt
through.
Otherwise it’s pretty easy.
So the top bar on the passenger side was giving me a lot of issues.
It was kinked so I couldn’t get this bolt out, the star bolt on that side and it started
to strip so it’s kind of frustrating.
And I couldn’t get the top end out to straighten it out because the sway bar was in the way.
Sorry these camera angles aren’t very good.
Anyway, so I went to town on it with a hack saw and cut it in half.
So hopefully now we’ll be able to make some progress on it.