How to Replace Front Struts 2011-19 Ford Police Interceptor Utility

Before you start, you wanna be aware that after you're done this job, you're gonna wanna go to an alignment specialist so that you can have the vehicle aligned so you don't wear out the tires prematurely. Take off the center cap. You can use a pry bar. If you don't wanna scratch the wheel, you can use a rag or a cloth. Get underneath here, pop it off. All right. Take lug nuts off. Use a 19-millimeter socket. And remove the wheel. I'm gonna take the sway bar link off the top of the strut. I'm gonna use a 19-millimeter socket on the back that's gonna prevent the stud from spinning and a 21-millimeter socket on the nut. Take that off.

All right. You might have to turn the wheel a little bit. Remove that. Pull the sway bar link out, set it aside. Now, we're gonna take this ABS wire off. Just slide that grommet out. And use a trim tool and pull this retainer off. It's still good. Gonna use a little rust penetrant, the bolts are a little rusty. Let that soak for a minute. Take a 21-millimeter wrench, hold the bolt, and to take the nut off, use a 24-millimeter socket. Do the same on the bottom one. And just take a hammer and tap the bolts out. Might need a punch. And just be careful, the knuckle is gonna try to come out. Just separate it and just watch the brake hose. You don't wanna have too much tension on the brake hose. So, you could use a bungee cord or a tie-down strap to hold that from stretching out. Now we need to from under the hood take these four nuts off. When you go to take the last one off, though, you wanna grab the strut from underneath. But you can use a 15-millimeter socket. If you don't have a socket that's like a semi-shallow socket or semi-deep, on the backside you can use a wrench to get those two off.

All right. Now, I'm gonna grab the spring and strut assembly and take this last nut off. And just slide it out. Now, take the new assembly and line it up. All right. You can get all those nuts started, but we're not gonna tighten those down yet. We wanna put everything together down below first. Yeah. Just line the knuckle up, take the bolts, put the bolts in, and put the nuts on. And there's splines on these bolts that get fixed to the knuckle itself. So, just take a hammer and just tap them in a little bit. All right. And because those bolts are splined, you don't necessarily need the 21-millimeter wrench, but I'm gonna use it anyway. And then take the socket, snug these up first. And you can torque those to 184 foot-pounds.

And take the wheel speed sensor wire, lock that in place, and then slide this grommet over here. All right. You might have to turn the wheel a little bit and then line the sway bar link up. I'm gonna use a pry bar just to pry it down a little bit. There we go. And put the nut on. And I'll tighten this up. Then I'm gonna torque this nut to 111 foot-pounds. Now, we can tighten these nuts down. And now I'm gonna torque these bolts to 41 foot-pounds. Take the wheel, put it on. Put the lug nuts on. And now I'm gonna torque these lug nuts to 110 foot-pounds. And I'm gonna do that in a star pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again, double-check. Take the center cap and tap it back on. Good to go.