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Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.
In this video, we're going to replace an upper control arm and ball joint assembly on this 2011 Chevy Silverado. This is a 1500 4-Wheel Drive; this procedure is the same for any 2007 to 2013 Silverado and Sierra 1500. The passenger side is basically the same as the driver's side.
You'll need a new control arm from 1A Auto.com, jack and jackstands, 10 to 22mm sockets with a ratchet and extension, an 18mm wrench, and an additional wrench for some extra leverage, breaker bar or pipe for extra leverage, penetrating oil, hammer, pry bar, and a torque wrench.
From the top, there are three 18mm nuts that hold the top of the strut in place: you see one there; one has a wire loom on it there that I'm going to reach down and grab, and just pull off. Apologies for the camera shot, but you just grab the wire clip and pull it up off the stud. Okay, so you have your other one there, and your third one, there. Now, use an 18mm socket with a long extension, and remove those three nuts. Remove the center cap just by prying with a screwdriver, and if you don't have the benefit of air tools, loosen the lug nuts with the vehicle on the ground, then raise and secure the vehicle, and then remove the lug nuts the rest of the way ... remove the wheel and tire, and they are 22mm lug nuts. Turn the wheel using hands, or use the steering wheel, and then you need to remove the stabilizer link; make sure you put some penetrating oil on the top end of it there, then use a wrench on the top side, and a socket wrench on the bottom side, and remove it all the way. I'm going to speed up here a little bit; we "cheat" a little bit by just using an impact wrench to take that off. That just speeds things up for us. Then, we'll remove the bolt the rest of the way: push down on the suspension, and pull the link out of there.
Up underneath, there are two 15mm bolts; hold the bottom of the shock strut in place. I was just using a 15mm socket and ratchet; you might want a breaker bar to break them loose, but they come apart pretty easy on this truck, and we'll fast forward as we just take those out. Take those bolts out, press down on the suspension some, and bring the strut down, and then up and out.
Now with some penetrating oil, spray down the ends of the two bolts that hold the control arm to the frame. There are little tabs that come out of the frame and go through these washers; and I'm using a paint marker to mark on the washers where those tabs are, so that when we re-assemble this, we can give it a good preliminary alignment. You will want to re-align your truck after you do this repair, but this at least gets it somewhere close to where it was originally. An 18mm nut holds the ball joint to the steering knuckle; put an 18mm wrench on there, and then hook another wrench onto it for extra leverage. Loosen it up. Here, you can see we still have the nut on the ball joint; we're going to put a big pry bar in there; pry between the steering knuckle and the ball joint, and hit the steering knuckle with a hammer until it pops apart.
There's a 10mm bolt on top of the control arm that holds the clip that holds the wire harness: remove that. Now, we're going to support the suspension with a jack. Remove the nuts that are on the end of the bolts that go into the frame; it's a 21mm socket with a ratchet, and we use a pipe for some extra leverage to get the bolts going and once we have them going, they come off easier than just with the ratchet, and I'll fast forward as we finish that up, and do the other side. As you see, here, use a hammer to start driving those bolts out, and then you can work them out by hand. You may have to use a punch and drive them further through. Now, remove the nut the rest of the way off of the top ball joint there, and then you should be able to pull the control arm up and then pull it out; you might need to use a crowbar or a large screwdriver to help pry it out.
The ball joint in our new control arm comes with a grease-able fitting, so we'll install that. Put the new control arm up in place, and you just kind of wiggle it up and down, I guess, to get the bolts to line up preliminarily with the frame. Now, put the bolts back in, get one bolt started in as much as you can, and then actually, if you start the other bolt in on the other side, this kind of lines things up; you should be able to get that bolt most of the way in. Use a hammer to tap it in if you need to, and then go back, and again, if you just move the control arm around a little bit, you should be able to push it in. I'm just going to fast forward as we start the nuts on ... And now, we're putting a wrench on the bolt end, and you can see we just pull it up, and re-align that mark with the tab on the frame, and just preliminarily tighten the nuts up just to hold it in place well. Here, we're just going to let the jack down some. This just relieves a little pressure so that we can then lift the upper control arm up, and get the ball joint lined up and then back into place, and then once it's all set, we'll actually jack the suspension back up until it's basically in the position it should be when the vehicle is riding on the ground.
You put the ball joint nut on, and start tightening it; most likely, it's going to start making the stud on the ball joint spin, and if that happens, you'll see here in a second, you can put a 6mm Allen wrench into the ball joint stud. Hold it; you need to be careful: sometimes as you pull the ball joint stud through, it can interfere with the axle, and you might need to undo the axle nut and push the axle through a little bit in order to get the wrench back out. Make sure you put the wrench on there, and put the second wrench on for some extra leverage, and tighten that nut right up.
Now again, we have the suspension up in the about the same position it's going to be when it rides on the ground; you want to make sure you have it up there, and then torque the bolts for the control arm to 100 foot-pounds, and just make sure that the marks on your washers and everything still line up. Now you can let your jack back down, reinstall the 10mm bolt that holds the wiring harness clip, and use a grease gun to put some grease into the ball joint, and we generally do it until we see the boot between the ball joint and the steering knuckle start to expand. Bring this strut back in: if you look on the top of the strut where the coil spring ends, that goes to the outside, and you put the strut back in, and then lift it up into place, and then you can just start the nuts onto the top. Install all of the lower bolts, and the strut, and tighten them up; you want to tighten them up between 70 and 75 foot-pounds. We speed up as we put the stabilizer link back in place; use a pry bar to lift up on the sway bar a little bit; put the link back in place, put the bolt up through, and then tighten the nut down on top.
The,n put our wheel back on, put the lug nuts back by hand first, then tighten them preliminarily, and with the vehicle back down on the ground and secure, torque the lug nuts to 110 foot-pounds using a crossing pattern. Tighten up and torque the top three nuts to 75 to 80 foot-pounds, and put that wire clip back in place, and you should be all set.
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 to call us toll-free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the Internet and in person.
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One of the first things you want to do is safely raise and support your vehicle by the frame, so your suspension can hang. Once you've done that, take a small pry bar, and we're going to take off this center cap. If you were to spin it, you're going to see a little notch in the cap. Just carefully slide this off of here. That exposes our 22-millimeter lug nuts. Remove all six. Remove your wheel.
All right. So, before we get too much further, I just want to make sure that you understand that it's always a great idea to do your sway bar links as a pair. We're going to use a 15-millimeter wrench up on top on this nut right here, and another 15-millimeter down here. We'll remove the whole shaft, and pull this right out. You can see it's starting to come unthreaded. Little rubber bushing, you want to pop that off of there.
Now, this shaft right here is going to be stuck inside the plastic unit there. I'm going to spray a little bit of penetrant, and then I'm going to see if I can drive this down. All right. As you can see, it was very rusted. I'll grab that with some pliers and continue. So, now I'm just going to take my pry bar. I want to come right in between here, and I can lift up and remove this centerpiece.
The next thing we want to do is unscrew our sway bar link, so it all comes apart like this. We're going to make sure we have our bolt. We have one of our washers and one of our bushings with a little piton facing up. Now, I'm going to come down through this lower control arm. Start it in like this. I'm going to take another one of these rubber bushings, and now I'm going to put that little piton area facing down towards the control arm. That's going to make it so it fits right in. That's great. Now, you need another one of those washers. Put that facing down. Put in your spacer. Another metal washer facing up. We're going to take our rubber bushing with the piton facing up, and that's going to face right up against towards this sway bar right here. Now, just bring this down just a teeny bit. I'm going to grab that pry bar, lift this up, and I'm going to slide this into where our sway bar hole is. Line that up. Set it down. Drive my bolt up through. We've got our rubber bushing with the piton facing down towards the sway bar metal. And then, of course, our nut. There we are.
Now, it's going to be time to tighten this up. It's important to remember, as you're tightening up the nut with the bolt, that as these come squishing down, you don't want them to flatten out like a pancake. You just want it so that the bushings are touching up against the metal areas of the control arm and the sway bar itself. So, I can see that they're touching all the way around. I'm just going to go a teeny bit more here. I'm going to put my pinky right up against it. And as you can tell, the amount of the shaft that's sticking up is approximately the width of my pinky. That should be pretty good right there. I can tell that there's no movement that's going to happen between the bushings and the bar, or the bushings in the lower control arm, and they're definitely not pancaked down.
We'll grab those lug nuts. Start them all on there. Let's bottom these out. Now, we'll bring it down to the ground, and we'll make it so the wheel is just barely touching enough, so the wheel can't spin. Now, let's do the lug nuts, 140 foot-pounds. Go crisscross. Torqued.
Now, it's going to be time to get the center cover on. Before you go ahead and pound it on there, just take a look at the back, you're going to see something that looks a lot like a valve stem. Line it up. It's going to go pretty much just like this. Light bonk and then, of course, clean up your wheel, make it look nice and pretty, and take it for a road test.
Tools used
Tools used
