Chevrolet GMC Front & Rear 6 Piece Suspension Kit TRQ SKA34372

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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, I'm going to show you how to replace the front shocks and spring assemblies on this 2011 Chevy Silverado. This is a 1500 with full-wheel drive. It's the same as any Chevy Silverado 1500 as well as the GMC Sierra 1500. We'll show you the passenger's side, but the driver's side is the same procedure. We do always recommend you replace these in pairs. You'll need new struts from 1AAuto.com, you'll need 15mm to 22mm sockets with a ratchet, a long extension, breaker bar or pipe for some extra leverage, penetrating oil, torque wrench, and jack and jack stands.

From the top there are three 18mm nuts that hold the top of the strut in place. You can see one there, one has a wire loom on it there that I'm going to reach down, grab, and just pull off. I apologize for the camera shot. You just grab the wire clip and pull it up off the stud. You have the 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 cab 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. 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 using 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 and ratchet on the bottom side to remove it all the way. Going to speed it up a little bit using an impact wrench to take that off. It just speeds things up for us.

Now with the shock or strut in place, we're just using a 15mm socket and ratchet. You might want to use a breaker bar to break them loose, but they come apart pretty easy on this truck. We'll fast-forward as we just take those out. With those bolts out, press down on the suspension some and bring the strut down and then up and out.

You can see the new struts from 1A Auto are exactly the same. There are two clips on the old strut that you want to pry off with a screwdriver, and then it's easiest to reinstall those just when you put the strut back into the vehicle. Put them on there, put the bolt up through, and you'll see us to do that. Putting the 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.

Then you can just start the nuts onto the top. Put the bottom down in place, take your bolt, run it up through, and then those clips that you took off of the original strut, put them into place, and we just kind of hold them with our fingers, get the bolt started, and then you can press them down into place and tighten up the bolts the rest of the way.

You can see here we use a screwdriver to put through the clip to hold it in place until it gets down far enough that it holds itself in place. Repeat it for the other side as well. You can tighten these up between 70 and 75 foot-pounds. Speed up as we put the stabilizer link back in place. Use a pry bar to lift up on the swag bar a little bit, put the link back in place, put the bolt up through, and then tighten the nut down on top.

Then put our wheel back on, put the lug nuts back on by hand first, then tighten them up preliminarily. 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 *38* foot-pounds, and put that wire clip back in place. You should be all set.

We hope this video 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.

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.

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet.

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 show you how to replace the rear shocks on this 2011 Chevy Silverado 1500. It's the same part and process on the Silverados and Sierras from 2008 to 2013. The items you'll need are: new rear shocks from 1AAuto.com, a jack and jack stands, penetrating oil, 21 millimeter socket and ratchet, a piece of pipe for leverage, 21 millimeter wrench, a torque wrench, and a hammer.

The shocks are obviously located right under the vehicle, attached to the rear-end and up to the frame. We're going to show you the left side, and the right side is the same procedure. To start off, you're going to want to spray some penetrating oil on these bolts, the one at the bottom, and then the one up at the top. Using a 21 millimeter socket and ratchet with a piece of pipe, you want to loosen up that bolt. You'll see that the actual bolt will keep turning in there, so you're going to want to use a 21 millimeter wrench on the other side, and just loosen up that nut and remove it. You want to do the same thing to the upper bolt, but you won't need a wrench for this because the nut is actually welded to the truck. Using a hammer, just hit that bolt out. You can use another bolt or a small screwdriver. Just hit that in to push the bolts out. Once that bolt is removed, swing that down and you can pull the bolts out from up top.

Here's the old part in the front, and the new part from 1A Auto in the back. You can see they're identical. They'll fit exactly the same. Now, take your new rear shock, and put it up into place. Replace the bolt. Now, you want to swing that lower part into position. If you can see there, it wasn't actually going to reach. What you want to do is either lower your vehicle so there's a little bit of pressure on the wheels to push that up, or just put a jack underneath this, and bring it up. You're really just trying to get that high enough so that it will match up with the shock. Now as you can see, the bolt slides right in. You just want to replace that nut. We'll fast-forward as he tightens these two bolts up. Now torque the nut on the lower part to 80 to 85 foot pounds, and the same with the bolt up top. Then go ahead and replace the other side. We always recommend you replace your shocks in pairs.

We hope this video 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.