Hey guys Chrisfix here.
Today I'm going to show you how to change out an upper control arm.
This is an A-arm style control arm.
This is also known as a wishbone style control arm.
So here are the tools I use to get the job done.
Breaker bar, crowbar, torque wrench,
a ratchet with some different sized sockets,
different sized open-ended wrenches,
a rubber mallet, some thread locker,
break clean and penetrating fluid.
This job is going to be really simple, we're just going to unbolt the ball joint
and then we're going to unbolt the two parts of the control arm that connect to the frame.
Now these two parts on my truck have camber bolts so that adjusts alignment.
So I'm going to get this truck aligned anyway.
But if you're messing around this you might have to get your car truck aligned afterwards.
You're going to want to use some penetrating fluid.
Make these bolts come off easier for you, so just spray the bolts.
For the ball joint I'll try to spray inside here and also on the nuts here
The first step is going to be to get this bolt off right here
this connects the ball joint in the control arm to the knuckle
In this case it's 15 millimeter.
So I'm going to use an open-ended wrench on one side and the ratchet on the other side.
I know on my knuckle that it's not threaded in here, so you could just knock this out lightly.
They give you a new nut and bolt in the kit.
You don't want to reuse the old one
You can see it has the teflon blocker on the top.
Now with the ball joint stud unbolted from the knuckle. We get a crowbar in here and just lift up.
Like so.
You can see the ball joint here is really bad.
It clicks up and down and there's way too much movement inside here.
Now that we got that undone from the knuckle. Let's go unbolt these two.
I'm going to start back here.
Now you can see over here there isn't much clearance.
But over here there's plenty of clearance.
So on the non clearance side I'm using a 13/16" wrench.
I'm going to use a breaker bar on this side, and then I'm going to use a regular ratchet.
Good! So now this should come right out.
Want to remember how we have this on. It was in like that.
And now this is a little tight back here.
So while trying to take this out, there's a clearance issue
So you actually have to snap out these brake lines,
from this holder here.
Good. Got that out.
Now this was aligned just like that, so remember that.
That'll be helpful, even though I'm getting an alignment, you still don't want to be too far off.
So we just did this side.
Let's do that side now.
We're going to do the same exact thing that we did on the other side for this side.
Put your wrench in the area with the least clearance.
Get a breaker bar on there.
Okay, got the nut off...
Take the wrench off.
Now we're going to take this piece of metal off.
It's like a washer.
And after that's off...
slide this out.
Okay, and that was in like that. The long part was facing towards us.
Now this part's easy.
Slide that out.
Here are the two control arms. You can see, old one, new one.
As always you want to match up the parts.
Make sure they're the same size and these two look good.
I like to clean where I put the new parts.
So I'm just using brake clean.
With the two spots clean.
I put our brand new upper control arm.
So with our new upper control arm in the first thing we'll do
is align it and put these camber bolts in just so that everything's set in place.
Remember this camber bolt was like this.
Good!
Now that that's in there. Let's do the other one.
Good.
With this in place we'll take one of our camber washers.
That'll fit in just like that,
hand tighten that nut.
That's hand tighten. Let's work on the other one.
Again our camber washer will go inwards.
Get it in place, and then just hand tighten it down.
After hand tightening let's snug them.
Good, this is snugged up. Let's do the other one.
Okay with that snugged, let's get the ball joint into the knuckle.
I'm going to take our knuckle. I'm going to push it
right where the control arm is.
Now I'm going to jack up the bottom of the knuckle
and that will give me easier access to push this in.
With that jacked up, you can see this fits in a lot nicer.
I'm going to take a rubber mallet and lightly tap it in
Got our brand new nut and bolt.
Slide that in.
I'm going to add a little bit of blue Loctite,
which is the removable stuff just to the end of this bolt.
Now we can tighten this down.
Once it's snug, we'll torque it.
On my truck this gets torqued down to 35 - 46 foot-pounds.
Now we have to torque these two down, and we're done.
The control arm to body bolts get torqued to 83 - 113 foot-pounds
Don't forget to snap in these brake lines
back to their spot.
Good.
And then we're done!
So that's how you change a wishbone or A-arm style upper control arm.
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