Ford Explorer Mercury Mountaineer Front 10 Piece Steering & Suspension Kit TRQ PSA59386

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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 or maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20-plus years 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.

This video is part one of a two-part series, replacing the ball joint in this '97 Expedition. In this video, we basically detail removing the old ball joint. This is the same for all the Expeditions, F150s, Explorers, a whole bunch of the Ford trucks and SUVs from this era.

Here's a list of the tools that we use on the Expedition. If you're doing a vehicle different from the Expedition, some of these sizes may differ. You will need heavy-duty tools. You're not going to want to try this with the 20-piece set Uncle Joe gave you for Christmas. This is heavy work. You'll need jack and jack stands, metric sockets 13-27 mm, standard sockets 1/2 inch to 7/8, you'll need a 35 mm socket, a 12 point 13 mm socket, ratchets extensions and a breaker bar or pipe because you will need to get some leverage on some of those bigger bolts and things, pliers, hammer, a heavy punch, ball joint removal tool, ball joint press, large flat blade screwdriver, and a paint marker or a old can of spray paint. The ball joint removal tool I'd recommend if you're going to be doing a lot of your own work. It's a pretty affordable tool to go out and get. Ball joint press might be something that you want to borrow.

Obviously, you're going to start by removing your cap. If you don't have the benefit of air tools, what you'll want to do is start with your wheel on the ground. With your wheel on the ground, there are probably three things you're going to want to do. Loosen your lug nuts. Then there's a 35 mm bolt in the center that holds the axle into the hub you're going to want to take the cotter pin and the cover off of that and loosen that 35 mm bolt. Also, go underneath and there are seven 13 mm 12 point bolts that hold your axle to your front drive. You'll want to just loosen those seven bolts. Much easier to loosen all these bolts with your tire on the ground held in place if you don't have all the tools that I have access to. You're going to want to loosen up your torsion bar. Your torsion bar is actually your spring. This is what supports the vehicle. I'm just going to take a little silver spray paint ... That way, when I back that bolt out, I'll know where it originally was.

Using an 18 mm socket and a ratchet, I'm going to loosen the torsion bar tension nut, or bolt, and you can basically pull it all the way out and then just turn it back in a few turns. You just want to loosen it up and take as much tension off the torsion bar as you can. You can see as I'm done, you can see where there's no paint on the threads, that that is how far you would want to retighten it. Now we're going to undo our tie rod end here. I'm just going to speed it up here. The cotter pin's very rusty, so first so first I break it with the pliers. Then I use a hammer and punch and just kind of keep working and breaking small pieces off until I can drive it through and out of the tie rod end. Now I'm pounding a 21 mm socket onto that nut because it was quite rusty. I just want to make sure I get a good socket that gets a good grip on it.

I've got a bar on here. Put a piece of pipe on it for some more leverage. Hopefully it comes apart. Just fast forward here as I switch over to a ratchet and remove the nut the rest of the way. Here I'm going to put a tie rod, it's a tie rod and ball joint tool, but obviously I'm using it to do a tie rod right now. By using this tool, I can assure that I can just reassemble my tie rod. I won't damage the tie rod by removing it this way. Next, I'm going to remove the stabilizer link, so I'm going to spray the top of it with some penetrating oil and let it sit for awhile. These stabilizer links are sometimes difficult to get apart. You can use hand tools. They will come apart. I just chose to use a impact wrench just to make it easier. I have a 9/16 socket on the bottom and a 14 mm socket on the top.

Use a hammer and pound down on that bolt. Then use a punch, see if you can it to go down through the sleeve. I end up actually having to use vice-grips and a wrench. Obviously, you also want to remove the other side so you can move your stabilizer bar around easily. What I'm going to do here, put set of vice-grips onto this shaft, tighter here. Now we're going to remove the half shaft of the CV axle. As I said in the beginning of the video, these are the bolts that if you don't have all the tools that I have, it might be easier to just loosen them while the vehicle's on the ground. You can see I use a big, large crowbar to hold the hub in place while I'm loosening those bolts.

You can see I spin it, loosen one of the bolts, spin it some more, loosen another bolt. If you were actually doing this with your vehicle on the ground, you'd have to probably loosen one or two of the bolts, then roll your car a little bit, put it in park, put the emergency brake on, loosen a couple more, and keep repeating that process.
Once it's unbolted, pull it down and off. I use a pair of pliers and either break off the ends or just straighten out the cotter pin and pull it out. Okay, 35 mm ... As I said in the beginning, if you don't have impact tools and this is easier with the tire on and on the ground, your other option would be to have a helper hold the brakes while you remove it.

What I do is give it one tap and just watch it, see if it moves. Actually, it moves pretty freely. You can pull your stabilizer bar up and out of the way. Pull your axle down towards the front. Then push it, lift it up, push it out. I've got the vehicle support under the frame. Then I've got my jack right under the control arm. You can see there is the bolt for the ball joint, and then there's the jack. I have a piece of the wood on there so I can easily access that ball joint bolt, as well as get a puller on there. Now I can jack it up. You can see, without that torsion bar tightened, the suspension travels here very easily.

Now I'm going to use pliers to break off and remove the cotter pin from the lower bolt. It ends up being kind of a rusty mess, so I actually use a hammer and punch and pretty much just break it away as much as possible so I can get that bolt off. Now a 27 mm socket put it on there, use a little hammer, make sure it goes all the way on. Got a breaker bar on there, actually you're going to take piece of pipe, put it on, give me some extra leverage. It's coming loose. Just one note here: It will help if you take your tie rod and put it back into the steering knuckle and just put the bolt on. That tie rod will hold things in place while you loosen that ball joint nut.

Just speed it up as I change over to my ratchet and take that bolt most of the way off. While my bolt's still on there, take my ball joint removal tool- This just, doing it this way, allows you to break it free without things falling down. Finish removing this bolt. Get your control arm on up. Pull the steering knuckle down and off.
There's a snap ring that holds the ball joint in place. You can use snap ring pliers. Mine was pretty rusty so I used a screwdriver and a hammer to just kind of pry it off and pop it off.

Now you're going to take a ball joint pulling tool, put the collar up on there. With this particular press use a 7/8 socket, put one on top there, and just tighten down the press. Traded my ratchet handle for my breaker bar. I'm going to speed it up here. What I did there was I created a whole lot of pressure by tightening it down. Then I used a hammer, gave it a good whack that kind of broke it free, and then the press just works it the rest of the way out. There's my old ball joint out.
Good a place as any to end it. Check out part two for the reassembly.

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.