Replacing front control arms

[nyst8ofmind]

Looking for a gauge of what I'm in for if I tackle this myself.

To give you an idea of my suspension expertise level, I've replaced shocks/struts all the way around, installed poly sway bar bushings and poly end links.

[Marc]

Do you have a separator that can get the ball joint stud out of the steering knuckle?? The job should go OK if you have that. Torque the ball joint stud nut to 41 ft. lbs. & the control arm bolts to 117 ft. lbs, according to the 2001 FSM.

[robaurora01]

If you do not have one of those a bfh normally works well along with a flat punch to seperate the ball joint from the nuckle. If you have changed struts before you should be well ok to do the ball joints as its not much complicated pretty straight forward however dont drive it unless your going straight to the alignment shop as your toe will need to be set

[aurora2001tan]

lower control arms an easy job. You will need new stabilizer links.

Here is what I do. Loosen the balljoint nut and run it up to the top of the threads. Now take a chisel and place it in between the nut and the axel. Give it a little whack with a hammer and it will pop loose. You wont damage anything even if you need to put it all back together. In this case with new arms and balljoints, who cares.

[renaldo0613]

Aug 14, 2013 17:34:13 GMT -6 aurora2001tan said:

lower control arms an easy job. You will need new stabilizer links.

Here is what I do. Loosen the balljoint nut and run it up to the top of the threads. Now take a chisel and place it in between the nut and the axel. Give it a little whack with a hammer and it will pop loose. You wont damage anything even if you need to put it all back together. In this case with new arms and balljoints, who cares.

Nice method instead of the fork tool.

[nyst8ofmind]

I'll pull a wheel this weekend and give the process a visual. For some reason the need for specialized tools usually steers me away from doing it myself but this doesn't sound too bad.

[nyst8ofmind]

I'm going to order them from RockAuto, am I better off with one brand over the other?

They offer:

Dorman: $55
Moog: $62
Mevotech:$69
Raybestos: $82

[Marc]

My favorite: Moog.

[RCA1186]

I'll second Moog

[robaurora01]

Never buy mevotech nothing but crap

[Paulaurora]

had to many issues with all the brands i would get them from the dealer.

[rayvaughan]

Given what OP's done in the past, they should be able to do this
operation standing on their head.

I just did mine. Mostly painless. In my case, I did the initial break
with a 3 ft length of 2"X 2" & a 4 pound hammer. Placed vertically
w. one end of the 2X2 just inboard of the ball joint & gave the other
end a couple good whacks (being careful not to ding the
fender). Worked for me, though YMMV. Then took a digging bar &
slid it over the control arm
(just inboard of ball joint) till one end was overlapping the
belly pan, then pried down gently & pulled the knuckle rearward
once the stud cleared before letting up on the digging bar.
Worked sweet for me.

On jack-stands it was scary trying to break the aft pivot bolt by hand,
so I resorted to an 18mm swivel impact socket on a 10" extension
& impact wrench, YMMV. On mine the nut was captive, so no need
to get a wrench on it.

Trying to torque the ball joint
castle nut, I found myself fervently wishing for some kind of
dogbone style extension (torque extender) to get an open-end
crowfoot in there without the
wrench head getting in the way. Same went for torquing the aft
control arm pivot bolt - no room to easily swing a torque wrench
working with jack-stands as opposed to having it up on a lift.
I ended up using that swivel socket and extension again and could
NOT get a realistic torque reading. I plan to back off and re-torque
them using a dogbone at 90 deg. to the wrench axis there. Instead
of fabbing up a new tool, I went the lazy route and found a Matco
dogbone (PN BTA 14M) that fits a Craftsman 14mm-hex-to-3/8
square drive adaptor I had laying around. So, dogbone to
torque wrench, hex/square
on the other end, then open end crowfoot on that. I can't BELIEVE
it's so hard to get a tool like this or open end metric extenders. If
there's a slicker way I've overlooked, maybe someone else here
can educate us both.

As for parts choice, I went with that Dorman for almost 3X the price
from Carjest - and the boot FAILED in under 100 miles. Big mistake
on my part. For that and a number of other reasons, I am so over
taking my business to what used to be a decent chain.

Biggest PITA on my swap? Pulling the cotter pin off the L side ball
joint. It was oriented side-to side and had been press-dressed with
a socket in a way that it had become one with the castle nut
(and terminally metal fatigued to boot). WW III getting that suckah
out.

Hope this helps.

[rayvaughan]

Paulaurora, after my sub-hundred-mile failure of a supposedly
heavy duty ball joint boot, I'm curious about what other kind of
issues you might have run into with various Brand X control
arms. Any good horror stories to scare the kids with? And what
kind of $ did OEM's run you?

[Paulaurora]

They didn't brake on me in half but after 2 month or so the lubricant that inside comes out and when u turn the wheel it would make loud squeaking noise or some made grinding noise. it cost me about 200$ with labor each for oem now 6 month later no issues.

[cadboy1]

What would be a symptom of bad control arms?