How to Replace Front Sway Bar Links 1998-2008 Ford Ranger

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In this video, we're going to be working with our 2001 Ford Ranger. We're going to show you how to remove and replace your front sway bar links.

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Here are the items you'll need for this repair: flat blade screwdriver, wheel lock key, 16-19mm sockets, ratchet, socket extension, breaker bar, 16-19mm wrenches, locking pliers, anti-seize grease, pry bar, torque wrench, jack and jack stands

There are a few way to remove the sway bar link on your vehicle. You can do it on the ground with the wheels on, with the vehicle raised and supported with the wheels on, or with the vehicle raised and supported and the wheels off. The latter is my favorite method, just because it gives you a lot more room to work with and makes it easier to deal with if something is stuck or being difficult to remove.

Using a taped flat blade screwdriver, locate the relief cuts in the hubcap, stick the screwdriver in and pry out to release it from the wheel. This particular truck has a wheel lock on it, so we'll need the wheel lock key in order to remove it, otherwise the rest of the nuts come off with a 19 millimeter socket and breaker box. Simply crack them loose for now, then raise and support your vehicle and remove the lug nuts the rest of the way. Remove the wheel from the vehicle.

To remove the sway bar link, there's a long bold that runs all the way through this style link. We put the appropriate sized wrench on the top. Ours is a 16, yours may be different. Rotate it to brace it against the frame because these tend to get pretty rusty and tough to remove. With our wrench braced against the frame, we'll get the appropriate socket, in this case an 18, and a breaker bar. Put it on the bottom nut which is under the control arm. It's very likely that yours is just going to break like ours did. Another method you can try is getting a pair of locking pliers under the sleeve, bracing it against the control arm or whatever you can get them against and trying to twist off the bolt at the top. Repeat the steps to either break or remove the bolt on the opposite side. Now we can move our sway bar up and out of the control arms and give us a little more room to work.

Now that we've got some room to work, we've clamped onto the rubber bushing at the bottom. We're going to see if you can work that off either by pulling on it or by twisting. There's 16 on the top. There's one more part off. We'll repeat this step with the sleeves and again with the long sleeve. Now our washer, sleeve and the lower bushing have all come off together. If yours don't, you can repeat the process until you get to the top bushing and washer and you're able to remove your link. We'll now repeat these steps on the opposite side.

Here we have our old sway bar link that we removed from our vehicle and our new part from 1AAuto.com. As you can see, these parts are exactly the same, although ours did break in quite a few places on the way off. That's very common on these because it's a long bolt that goes through a metal sleeve so these fill with water and debris and seize onto the bolt and they can be a real pain to get out. Fortunately, reassembly is pretty straightforward. We have the long bolt which holds everything together. When it's installed, we'll have a washer and the bushing. This will drop through our sway bar. We'll have a bushing and then a washer on the bottom side of our sway bar. The sleeve to properly space everything and keep it at the right height. Another washer and bushing followed by a lower control arm which will then pinch together with a bushing, washer and the new nut.

It's usually a good idea, when assembling the new one, to go ahead and put some kind of anti-seize grease or lubricant on here to keep this from freezing up and making it difficult to remove again in the future. Having a bad sway bar link can cause a popping noise going over bumps and make you feel a little bit more body roll when taking hard corners or at high speed. Fortunately they're easy to replace and this replacement part from 1A Auto is going to go in direct fit just like your original equipment, get your vehicle handling right with a nice, quiet suspension and fix you up right.

We'll take a moment to coat about half of our bolt for right now in an anti-seize grease or lubricant. We'll start by installing our washer with the concave side facing down. We'll install our first bushing on there. This tapered end will face down into the sway bar. It goes down through the top at which point we'll apply a little more grease followed by a bushing with that tapered end facing up into the bottom of the sway bar and a washer with the concave facing up to the bottom of the bushing. We'll apply some more grease followed by our sleeve. More grease, a washer with the concave side facing down, and a bushing with the tapered end facing down into the control arm. We'll place that down into our control arm. We're not going to put the bottom in yet because we always replace sway by links in a pair and it's going to make installing the other side a lot easier.

We'll follow this same procedure to install the other side and then finish up with our bushings, washers and a nut. Now once we've got everything put together, we'll install the tapered side of our bushing up. We'll have to pry down on our sway bar a little to compress those bushings some and give us some slack to get the threads started. The 16 millimeter socket and ratchet on the top and an 18 millimeter wrench. Or in this case, I'm using a breaker bar for a little more leverage. Go ahead and start tightening down your sway bar link until you've compressed the bushings nice and tight. We'll just get them down tight until they've compressed the bushings. They sit in there nice and tight without really crushing or cracking any of these bushings. Tighten down the other side the same way.

Reinstall your wheel and tire onto the hub and get your lug nuts on as tight as you can with the wheel in the air. Put the weight of the vehicle back onto the tires. Now we'll torque our lug nuts to 100 foot-pounds in a cross-pattern making sure you end with your locking wheel lug if you have one. Again, these are a 19 millimeter. Line up the tabs on your center cap. Place them over the lug nuts. Tap it into place.

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