Front Lower Rearward Control Arm 2003-10 BMW X3

You want to keep in mind when you're doing this job after you're done, you're going to want to go to a local garage and have the vehicle aligned, so you don't have premature tire wear. Going to take the wheel off, use a 17-millimeter socket. Take these lug studs off. So I'm going to hold the wheel on, take that stud off and then grab the wheel, take it off. Gonna loosen up this nut, use a 22-millimeter wrench. You're going to have to use a wrench because you won't be able to get a socket in there. And take that nut off. There's different front-end tools you can use to remove this or separate the ball joint from the knuckle. I'm going to use a pickle fork. If you're using a pickle fork though, you're probably going to rip the boot. So keep that in mind. If you use a different type, then you probably will be okay. And just keep in mind when you're using a pickle fork, see where the teeth are going, you don't want to stab the other boot. There we go. Got that to separate.

Right, now I'm going to use a 16-millimeter wrench to hold the bolt and a 18-millimeter socket, remove the nut. Give it a tap. Try not to mess up the threads on the end of it. Slide that up. And just grab the arm and slide it off. Now take this arm, slide the bolt through here. And then get the knuckle lined up with the ball joint, there we go. Put the nut on. We'll start tightening this up. Now, I'm going to tighten this. Now, if you had the ability to get a torque wrench in there, you're going to want to torque that nut to 59 foot-pounds. I'm going to use a screw jack underneath the control arms to position this control arm so that it's at about ride height level. What is ideal is to have the wheel on it and torque this bolt while the wheel is on the ground, but it's very difficult to do that. So I'm going to use a screw jack and raise it up as close as possible. Use a 16-millimeter wrench, 18-millimeter socket, torque this to 74 foot-pounds. All right, after you torque that, you're going to want to go an additional 90 degrees, so you can use an angle meter if you have one, if not do the best you can. It's about 90 degrees. Now, I can lower the screw jack. Take the wheel, put the wheel back on. Get the lug stud. I'm just going to torque these lug bolts to 110 foot-pounds. I'm going to do it in a star pattern so that it tightens the wheel down evenly. And just go around again, double-check.