Ford Explorer Mercury Mountaineer Front 10 Piece Steering & Suspension Kit TRQ PSA59385

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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 show you how to replace an outer tie rod on this 2003 Mercury Mountaineer. We show you on the passenger side, but the driver side is the same procedure. The items that you need for this is a new outer tie rod from 1AAuto.com, a 7mm, 19mm, and 21mm socket and ratchet, a piece of pipe for some extra leverage, two adjustable wrenches, a pair of pliers, a hammer, a tape measure, jack and jack stands, and a torque wrench.

Pry off the hub cap by using a flat blade screwdriver in the small slot on the side. Once you get it started, you can just pull out around the edges. If you don't have the benefit of air tools, you'll want to start with the vehicle on the ground, loosen the lug nuts, then raise and support the vehicle on jack stands. Remove the lug nuts, wheel, and tire the rest of the way.

There's a small indent on the inner tie rod. Put the tape measure there and measure out to the center of the grease fitting, which is 9-1/16" in this vehicle. Then, just bend off the legs on your cotter pin on the bolt. Then just pull the cotter pin out with a pair of pliers. Then, using a 19mm socket and ratchet, just remove this nut. Spray this nut with some penetrating oil, and then, using two adjustable wrenches, just separate it. Once it turns, it's loosened up, and you can hammer your wheel knuckle until you see the outer tie rod move. You can see it move right there.

Now you can pull it up and out of the knuckle and twist off the outer tie rod. Up top is the old outer tie rod, and below it is the new one from 1A Auto. You can see they're identical, and they'll fit exactly the same.

For lineup purposes, ideally what you want to do is be able to remove this without turning the inner tie rod. Our bolt or nut didn't come loose. That's not a big deal, but it does mean that we will need to take this and have it aligned because we did turn the inner tie rod a little bit, but we can still put it back together. We'll fast-forward as Mike twists on the new outer tie rod. Remove the nut and then line up the outer tie rod with the hole on the wheel knuckle. You may need to move the wheel knuckle around a bit until it goes down in place. Once you get it in, replace that nut and then just tighten it up. You want to tighten this to about 50 foot-pounds. Once it's fully tightened, make sure the hole lines up with the castle nut, and you may need to turn it a bit more so that it lines up, and then just push your cotter pin through and bend the tabs in opposite directions.

Tighten that nut back on to the outer tie rod using your two adjustable wrenches. Put in your new grease fitting and tighten it up with a 7mm socket and ratchet. Now, just add a few squirts of grease into the grease fitting. Replace your wheel, and then replace all the lug nuts and tighten them preliminarily. Then, you'd want to lower the vehicle and tighten them the rest of the way and torque these in a crossing pattern to 100 foot-pounds. Replace your hub cap, and we recommend you have your front alignment checked and adjusted if necessary.

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.

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com. Your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet. Thanks for tuning in, this is Part Two of a two part series. We're going to go through reinstalling your lower ball joint on this '97 Expedition. This procedure is similar for a whole bunch of different Ford trucks and SUVs. Here's a list of tools that we used on this Expedition. If you have a different vehicle some of the sizes may differ and one thing that is not on here, you will want a grease gun to grease up the ball joint after you install it.

We've got our control arm here. We're just going to put it right on there like that. Our ball joint, our collar and then that's going to go up and in. We put our press on there. I'm going to speed it up here so we use the press to push the ball joint up and in and you do this in two steps. This first step is just going to get the top of the ball joint flush with the top of the control arm. We're going to take this boot off. Now with this ramp here on top of it. I'll fast forward here again as we use that press to push the ball joint the rest of the way up into the control arm until it's nice and tight, the bottom is nice and tight against the bottom of the control arm and then put your protective boot back on. Now you want to lock it in place with a snap ring. You can get this on without snap ring pliers, but they certainly are a help. Just get this set up.

What I'm going to do is I'm just going to thread the nut on a little bit and then use a hammer to kind of knock the ball joint outward, that helps make it easier to get the other and just keep that protective boot up on there. That's just going to allow your knuckle down on there, your knuckle up, take your jack out of the way. Lift it up on the knuckle and bolt. Okay, I'm going to speed through putting the half shaft back in. One thing I did forget to do, I do a little bit later, is now is the best time to put the grease fitting on top of the ball joint, before you put that axel in there, but put the axel in place to get it into the hub and then get it lined up on the axel and start a couple of those 13 mm bolts. Once you get all the bolts in you want to torque them to 60 foot pounds and what I do is I use a black marker.

I mark the head of them after I torque them. Then you want to kind of go to the opposite side, torque the next bolt, mark it and just keep going until they're all torqued. I'm just putting the tie rod back on. Just put the nut on there and keep it in place. Now we want to tighten the ball joint nut to 98 foot pounds and that's for this '97 Expedition. It could be different for your vehicle. Okay, I put our cotter pin through, bend it down and around. I'm going to fast forward through putting the grease fitting on top. Like I said earlier a little bit easier to do this step before you put the axel in. Then continue to fast forward as a put a grease gun onto that fitting and fill the lower ball joint with grease. Okay, I'm going to tighten my tie rod nut to 60 foot pounds. Next the cotter pin through, bend it down. Here I'm going to install this sway bar link. I've already put a new link on the other side, then just started the nut on it. Bushing, the bushings always go towards the metal.

Okay, so I've got a bushing on the bottom going up to the mount control arm and a bushing above that. Then my shaft goes on there and then the washer, then the bushing pushing down and in. Make sure the bushing is centered in the stabilizer bar unit. Now bushing and washer, then my nut. Now you'll want to use your jack to put some pressure on the suspension and then tighten up the stabilizer to 15 to 17 foot pounds. Then we'll put on our center hub nut. We're just going to tighten that preliminarily. We're not going to torque it until the wheel's back on. Now you can let your suspension back down and you want to re-tighten your torsion bar and since we marked it we can tighten it right back up to where it was before. You can put your tire back on and start each lug nut one by one. Make sure you don't cross thread them. Tighten them down preliminarily. Torque the lug nuts to a hundred foot pounds using a star pattern. Okay, now using a 35 mm socket torque your lug nut to 220 foot pounds. Put the retainer back on and then the cotter pin, then your wheel cap. We recommend you have your alignment checked and adjusted if necessary.

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 with you on the Internet and in person.

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

Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing and maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20+ year's experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

In this video we'll be replacing the tie rod on this '98 Explorer same as any '95 to '01 Explorer, Navajo, and Ranger, Mazda B Series pickup, and really this is a procedure that is similar for most cars.

Tools you'll need on the Explorer: jack and jack stands, 8mm, 13mm, 15mm, 19mm, which I forgot there, 21mm sockets and ratchet, pliers, a tie rod puller which is the right way to do it. You can use a hammer but you have to be careful. Loctite, a red or black marker, and two large adjustable wrenches.

So obviously you're going to want to jack up and secure your vehicle. You can just work a screwdriver in there to pry off your cap, and these are 19mm. If you don't have impact tools, loosen your lug nuts on the ground, then raise your vehicle and secure it with a jack stand, and then remove the lug nuts. Once the lug nuts are off just pull the tire right off, and there's four bolts that basically hold the brakes on. There's one here 13mm, and one up here, and those just hold the calipers to this big bracket. There's also a 15mm bolt here, and a 15mm bolt right up here. We're just going to speed through removing those four bolts, and you pull the caliper up and off and you can wire tie it up top and then that bracket comes off with the 15mm bolts, and we'll pick it up from there.

This bracket then comes right off, and your rotor comes right off. You're going to want to take off this dust shield and its 8mm bolts. Remove this cotter pin with a pair of pliers. Needle nose usually works best but usually the best thing to do is just grab hold and break off the pin on this side. It's a 21mm bolt, and actually give it a good tug. It does come easy. We'll put our puller on there. Now you could just use a big hammer and pound this through, but we want be very careful. If you go that route, you don't want to mushroom the end of this, and then it actually won't go through your steering knuckle. Now really this is using the tie rod ball joint puller is the best way, and you'll end up tightening this up good, and pretty soon it will pop. There it goes. A couple of big adjustable wrenches here. I'll fast forward a little here as I try and mess with it to try and get the best angle to both get a good pull on the wrenches and still be able to see it with the camera.

So that's off so now I'll lock this one onto here. The new tie rod does come with a new nut here so what I'm going to do is mark really well where this nut was so that when I put the new one on I know to go right up to where I put the red marks. I'm going to put just a little bit of Loctite on here, some down here, and put the new nut on. You can tell pretty well where it was. What you want to take into account is if either this nut or the length of your new tie rod is any different, you want to adjust the position of this nut. So if your tie rod is a little shorter, you adjust it out a little bit, or if the tie rod was a little longer than your original adjust it back in. So that's about where my old one was.

Now I'll put the new tie rod on, and you want to make sure you hold this. You don't want this twisting because that is adjustment as well, and if you do this this should give you a pretty good initial alignment. I recommend you go get an alignment so you don't wear out your tires too quickly or end up wearing out the new tie rod or wearing out your ball joints or anything like that if you car's not aligned correctly. Start my bolt down here to hold this in place. Now I want to tighten the lock nut up here really good. So I'm going to now tighten up this nut to about 75 foot pounds, and tighten it up a little more to get that and get my cotter pin right through there. The cotter pin you just take it and yank it right around. Then last but not least we'll put in our grease fitting and take our pliers and tighten that up. It comes pre-greased, but you can fill it up with grease, and now we can put everything back together.

We'll kind of fast forward putting that brake shield back up and tightening up those three 8 mm bolts. We'll also fly through putting the brakes back together and your wheel back on. A couple of notes, again, you probably would want to get a alignment after you've done any steering or suspension work like this, and then also just the first time you drive your car just be very careful. You've worked on the brakes. You've worked on the steering. So make sure your car is stopping before you go fast, and make sure that there is no looseness or anything in the steering before you road test it.

If you do want to see putting your brakes back together in regular motion, just check out our front brake video. We'll put the wheel back on. Put your lug nuts on. Get them snug then lower your car to the ground. Torque them up to 90 to 100 foot pounds. Replace your cap, and you're in business.

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