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Part Details
Our control arms are designed to be direct replacements for the original factory parts. They are 100% brand new and require no modifications for installation. No special tools are required because all of the bushings come pre-installed.
Our steering and suspension components are pre-greased and sealed for long life and do not require the extra maintenance typically required by greaseable versions.
Item Condition:
New
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WARNING: This product can expose you to chemicals including Lead and Lead Compounds, which are known to the State of California to cause cancer, and birth defects or other reproductive harm. For more information, go to www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.
Lifetime Warranty
This item is backed by our limited lifetime warranty. In the event that this item should fail due to manufacturing defects during intended use, we will replace the part free of charge. This warranty covers the cost of the part only.
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Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the internet. Hi, I'm Don for 1A Auto. I hope this how to video helps you out. The next time you need a part for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.
In this video, we'll show you how to replace a front control arm on this 2003 Nissan Altima, it's same process on these Altima's from 2002 to 2006 and we show you on the passenger side but the driver's side is the same process. The items you'll need for this is a new front control arm from 1AAuto.com, 12, 19 and 21 mm sockets and racket with a piece of pipe for extra leverage, 22 mm wrench, penetrating oil, a torque wrench, hammer, pliers and jack and jack stands. After this repair, you will want to have the alignment checked on your vehicle.
Start off by removing your wheel, if you don't have air powered tools you're going to remove the lug nuts while the vehicle is on the ground and jack it up and remove them the rest of the way.
The first thing on the control arm that you want to do is remove this cotter pin. You just want to straighten out the prongs and pull it out from the other side using pliers. Once you get the pin out, spray it with some penetrating oil to break it loose and then remove it with the 22 mm wrench. Once the nut is removed, hit the knuckle with a hammer and that will allow you to pull this down.
Next, you want to remove this 19 mm bolt. Now you do want to put an additional stand underneath your engine here because to remove the last control arm bolt, you're first going have to remove one of these engine brackets. To do that, you just want to remove the 19 mm bolt on the one end and the two 12 mm bolts on the other. Once those are removed, you can just remove that bracket. Now remove these last two 19 mm bolts holding in your control arm. Once all of those are removed, you just want to pry this out.
Old control arm on the left, the new one from 1A Auto on the right, you can see they're identical and they are going to mount exactly the same. Before you install your new control arm, you want to first remove the castle nut and pull off that plastic cover and then feed your new control arm into place. You may need some assistance from a hammer. You want to do this carefully and we are going to fast forward as he does this but you are just trying to line up the holes on the control arm with the holes on the body of the car. Now you can replace that 19 mm bolt and just hammer it in half way and that will hold the control arm in place. Then replace these two 19 mm bolts and then just tighten them up. Tighten up this bolt the rest of the way.
If you replace bracket and the 19 mm nut and the two 12 mm bolts and then you just want to torque each of these 19 mm bolts to 85 foot pounds. Now you can remove that stand now. Now push the stud of the control arm into the hole in the wheel and replace that nut. We do supply you with a new castle nut. Once you've tightened it up, put the cotter pin into place and using pliers bend the prongs in opposite directions. Replace your wheel, hubcap and lug nuts and tighten the lug nuts preliminarily, lower the vehicle and tighten them the rest of way. Then you want to torque the lug nuts in a crossing pattern to 100 foot pounds.
We hope this helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com. Your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet. Please feel free call us toll-free 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the Internet.
Tools used
Before you lift and support the vehicle, loosen the lug nuts with the wheel on the ground. Use a 21-millimeter socket and breaker bar. Lift and support the vehicle. With the lug nuts loose, you can use the 21-millimeter socket or just your hand. Finish removing the lug nuts. Remove the wheel. Place it aside.
With the vehicle raised and supported, this is your lower control arm in the front. This is the driver's side. It's made out of aluminum. There's two mounting bolts here and this bushing. It's all one piece. There's another mounting bolt here, and of course your ball joint up here.
I'm going to start by spraying some rust penetrant on the ball joint nut and let that sit. These bolts go through and I can see them poking out at the top of the subframe, so I'm going to try to spray some rust penetrant on the top of those to help them come out. This bolt goes into what's probably a captured nut on the inside of the subframe. I can't see it, and there are some access holes in here. I'm going to do my best and just try to blindly spray some rust penetrant in here, and hopefully that will help with getting that bolt out.
Use a breaker bar and a 19-millimeter socket and an extension, and I'm going to break this loose. Remove this bolt here with a 19-millimeter socket and a breaker bar.
With the steering wheel unlocked, I'm going to turn wheel and hub assembly outwards best I can. To remove the cotter pin, I've got some needle nose pliers. I'm going to try to bend it straight. Sometimes you've just got to grab it and wiggle the cotter pin back and forth and you'll start to see the looped end move and it's freed up. Kind of work the needle nose into it. So pry against it. When these cotter pins get rusty it can be a bit of a pain to get them out. The other trick is to use some side-cutting pliers. Sometimes you get a better grip on them on the cotter pin with the side-cutters and just work it out. Or like that. It actually cut the end off of it. Sometimes you can just cut the looped end right off. Then go back to your needle nose pliers and it's easier because you should replace these cotter pins every time you take this off, and try to slide. Grab one part of the cotter pin. This one's just going to break on me. There we go. I've got it out.
With the cotter pin removed, I can take a 22-millimeter wrench and loosen the nut. This one's on here really tight, so I'm going to take my dead blow mallet or you can use a rubber mallet on the end of the wrench. Just going to hit it, break it free. This is almost off. You really can't get a socket and a ratchet in here. If you've got a ratcheting 22-millimeter wrench, you could use that. I just have a regular box wrench, so just turn by turn, get the nut loose and off.
This control arm is made out of aluminum. It's very soft. You can try to hit the knuckle with a heavy hammer to break this out of the taper, but you could hit the control arm and damage the aluminum, so you really should use a ball joint separator tool. With the ball joint separator tool in place, I'm going to use the appropriate size ratchet and socket. Just going to gently push it out. It will snap when it comes free. Now we can pull this down and out of the way. It should come right out of the taper.
Finish removing the lower control arm bolts just using a socket and a ratchet. Just try to pull these out evenly. You can see the arm is coming loose. It won't fall. It's got this brace below it. Take these bolts out. Put them aside. They are the same length so we don't have to keep track of which hole they came out of, but we'll just put them aside so we don't lose them. Now finish taking out this bolt with a 19-millimeter socket and ratchet. You need to move the arm around. Now just be aware the arm is really loose and just keep a hand on it so it doesn't fall. It's pretty light. It's aluminum, but you don't want it to hit you in the face or fall. There it is. Now this is loose. Slide it out. Work it out of the suspension here.
We removed our control arm. Here's our old control arm from our vehicle. If the ball joint has gone bad in your control arm these cannot be pressed out and replaced. You have to replace the whole control arm. Also, if these bushings are bad, the whole control arm has to be replaced. This is the new one from 1AAuto.com. It is marked. This is the left-hand or driver's side. It's got brand new bushings already in. It's got brand new ball joint. It comes with a new castle nut. You're going to want to remove this plastic piece. This is just for shipping to protect the boot. Leave that off. We're going to put the castle nut right here for now so I don't lose it. It has a new cotter pin for the end. As you can see, it's identical in design as the old one, same material. They're both aluminum. This will fit in the vehicle and work great for you.
Take our new control arm. I'm going to start at the back and work it up where it was originally. Might have to flex it a bit. Just like that. I'm going to try to line up the front as best I can. Put it in place. I’ll move the knuckle out of the way so I can play with the alignment of the control arm.
Take our front bolt. It's got a tapered snout to it, so it should help align it. You might have to move the arm around. Let me just start threading it back in with my ratchet. I'm not going to fully tighten this. I just want to get it snug because we'll come back and torque this. Push up on the control arm, line them up.
Put the ball joint back into the knuckle. If you need to you can – there you go. We'll put our nut on here. Tighten our ball joint nut down, 22-millimeter wrench. See, it's pulling these together. It's going to pull the ball joint up into the taper of the hub. That helps to lock it in place. I'll get this nice and tight and then put a cotter pin in. Put our cotter pin in. Take some needle nose pliers. Bend it over. The ball joint is now tight.
To finish installing the control arm, these bolts and this bolt here should be torqued with some vehicle weight on it. You can use a floor jack or you can use a stand-up jack since we're on a two-post lift. Just going to put some weight on the control arm by jacking up on it, just enough so I see the vehicle lift a little bit. The torque for these is 93 to 112 foot-pounds. I'm going to torque them to 100. They go down pretty evenly.
Okay. The torque on this bolt is 67 to 88. I'm going to torque it to 75. Now take the weight off the suspension. We'll reinstall our wheel and we'll torque the lug nuts. Just going to use the socket to get these lug nuts as tight as you can by hand. We'll torque the wheel afterwards once it's on the ground. Torque on the lug nuts is 73 to 86. I'm going to torque these to 80 in a cross pattern. The job is complete.
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