How to Replace Rear Upper Inner Control Arm Bushing 2001-05 BMW 325Xi

What's up guys? I'm Andy from 1A Auto. In this video I'm going to show you how to replace the rear upper inner control arm bushing on this 2001 BMW 325 XI. If you need this part or other parts for your vehicle, click the link in the description. Head over to 1AAuto.com.

I'm going to loosen up these lug bolts. I'm going to use a 17 millimeter socket and a breaker bar. Now I'm going to raise and support the vehicle. We're using a two post lift. If you're doing this at your house, you can use a jack and jack stands.

Now, I'm going to take the 17 millimeter socket and an extension just to take the lug bolts out. Now when I go to take the last one out, I am going to hold the wheel so that the wheel doesn't fall. Take that one out, set it aside, and grab the wheel and shake it off.

After I get the wheel off, I'm just going to support the lower control arm, because I want to remove the shock. I'm going to support right here. If you're doing this on the ground, you can use a floor jack. Just raise this up a little bit. Once you get it to move a little bit, should be able to take the shock bolt out. Now with the lower control arm supported, I'm just going to take an 18 millimeter socket and an air gun. I'm going to take this bolt out. If you don't have any air tools, you can always use a ratchet or breaker bar.

Take that out, slide the bolt out. Now I can lower the control arm. It's going to take the tension off the coil spring. I'm just going to move this brake pad wear sensor wire. Just pull it out of that clip right there. Just move it out of the way. It's fine like that. All right, that's good.

Now we're going to remove this bolt right here. There's a nut on the inside here, so I'm just going to use an 18 millimeter wrench, hold that nut, 18 millimeter socket, and then an air gun. You can use a ratchet if you don't have an air gun. Loosen that up, take the nut off. Carefully remove this bolt. Oops. Now that can separate.

All right. I want to take these three 18 millimeter bolts out right here. That's of the lower trailing arm. But first, I want to take off some of these wires. I don't want to ... I want to give them a little more slack, because I don't want to break them when I'm taking those out. Just slide those out of the clips, and those are the ABS wires and the brake sensor wires, brake pad sensor wire.

Now I'm going to use an 18 millimeter socket and my air gun. You can use a breaker bar if you don't have an air gun. I'm just going to loosen these up a little bit first. I'm not going to take it out completely. Once they're all loose, then I'll take them out. Pull that out. That's why I left one of them in, so if this falls, it's not going to hit anything or hit myself. I can support this, take this last one. There we go.

Now I'm just going to get a pry bar, get underneath this spring, just try to slide this out. Just be careful. You don't want it to hit you. Just like that. Get the spring out. Then it makes it a little bit easier to get this upper control arm out of the way. Just take the pry bar, get underneath here. On the top side of the bolt, I'm going to use a 17 millimeter wrench to hold the bolt, and then underneath the car we're going to use a 13 millimeter socket extension and an air gun, or you could use a ratchet and take the nut off. Oops. I'm going to take that side off and then also this other side right here. Ready to go.

All right, now there's a bolt right up here. It's not this bolt. I'm going for the upper one. I'm going to take an 18 millimeter socket and an extension. I'm going to go over the axle, over the CV axle, and then I can use a breaker bar. I'm going to break it loose free and then switch to a ratchet.

I can't get that bolt out because there's a nut spinning on the other side, so I'm going to take an 18 millimeter wrench and try to get this on the nut on the front side. All right, now just slide that bolt out. I have the nut right there. Slide the bolt out. Now I can just grab the arm, slide it out.

What we want to do is we want to press this bushing out of there. There's the new one. What I'm going to do is my tool doesn't have the right adapter, so what I can do is take a socket, find one that's going to fit. It's going to be slightly smaller than this bushing right here. If you take a socket that's a little too big, then you're not going to be able to push it through, so that socket's too big. That one, that one fits pretty good, so either this one or this one. This one might be a little bigger, so we'll try this one.

We're going to put this on this side. Take our tool, slide this through here. Then on the other side we don't want something that's bigger than the bushing, but we need it to be pretty deep, so that's too small. If you don't have an adapter that'll fit on the other side, you can also use a socket on that side as well. Just find a socket that this will fit through so that at least it goes in there. We'll get it started with this and see how it goes.

Get the nut on there. I'm just going to make sure this socket is centered. It looks pretty good. Now, just tighten up the tool. I put it in a vise because it's going to be easier to work with in the vise. All right, that's really tight right there.

All right, with that really tight, what I'm going to do is try to loosen this up a little bit. I'm just going to use an air hammer. You don't want to do this too much, because you don't want to crack any of the aluminum. You could even try it with a regular hammer and just give it a couple taps. Hopefully that loosens it up. Go back, tighten it up a little more. Do the same.

All right, so I actually flipped it around and I'm pushing it this way. Seems like it's working a little better doing it this way. It seems like the bushing has bottomed out in my socket, so we'll take this apart, slide that out. Let's see if I can tap it the rest of the way out. There we go. You want to remember which way you slid the bushing out so when you slide the new one in, you want to slide it back in the same way. Have this part going this way.

Here's the old part. Here's the new inner upper control arm bushing from 1AAuto.com. As you can see, it's the same shape. It's machined the same way. Get yours at 1AAuto.com and you'll be ready to rock and roll.

All right, so we want to slide this bushing in the same way the old one came out. If you wanted to, you could have marked the side where the longer end is over here, and generally it seems like it's easier to go in on one side. If you try to go in this way, it really doesn't work. We'll slide it in this way. Slide our tool in. Set this up.

All right, now the socket's too deep for this, so what I'm going to have to do is I'm going to have to start with a plate, stick a plate on this side. I stuck this plate right here, and once I get this started and about halfway through, I'm going to have to switch to the socket, because otherwise it's going to bottom out on this. Let's see if we can get this going.

As you can see, it's going in, which is good. Now I was able to switch to putting the socket back there, and we'll press it in the rest of the way. Then once this is flush with the control arm, then I'm all set.

I just switched to a bigger socket because it seemed like once it was starting to get tight in there, it was starting to push on the rubber part of the bushing. Once that looks flush, it looks good right there. Now just remove the tool, make sure it looks pretty good. Looks good on both sides. We're ready to install it back in the car.

Take the control arm, slide it back in position. Now that part, this rubber piece on this bushing, the thicker part goes towards the back of the vehicle. You just slide it right there. You can take the bolt, slide the bolt from the back of the vehicle. Might have to wiggle the control arm a little bit to get this to line up. Sometimes the axle bolts get in your way. You can twist the axle a little bit if you have to. See it starting.

All right, so it's sticking up there a little bit. Now I still have the nut stuck on the wrench, which that's going to actually help me out. I'll just be able to fish it in there. If the nut isn't stuck on the wrench, you could actually take some masking tape and tape it to the wrench. Might make it a little easier for you to get it started. I'll just start it by hand first. All right, so now I'm just tightening this up with a ratchet while I'm still holding the wrench. Get that snug.

Now I can get a torque wrench. All right, now with the wrench there, I'm going to have to hold the wrench while I use a torque wrench to torque this. I'm going to torque this to 60 foot-pounds. What you want to keep in mind, you want this arm to rest where it would be while driving down the road, ideal. If you put this all back together and were able to tighten this bolt up last while it's at regular ride height, that would be ideal, but that's not always that easy. We're just going to do the best we can. Tighten it up just like this, and that's about where it would be ride height wise. That's 60 foot-pounds.

Now I'm going to install these bolts for the sway bar link. Now I'm replacing the bolts because the bolts were pretty rusty, so the size is going to be different. Normally you'd have a 17 millimeter on top and a 13 down below. I have 12 and 12 here. I'll just put these on.

I'm just going to use an electric ratchet and tighten these down, and then use a wrench underneath. Do the same on this side. I'll just snug these down with a regular ratchet. That's good. Same on this side. That's good.

Take the spring. Make sure you have this cone bushing on the bottom and then the open one up top. Now for taking the spring out and putting it in, we had this bolt out right here and then the bolts out for this lower control arm here. That just made this a lot easier to get the spring in and out. I have seen other people take and put a floor jack in between here and push down on this upper control arm, but I feel like that puts a lot of strain on the lower rear, on the rear axle, and I feel like you might do some damage, so be careful doing that. Not to say it's impossible to do it that way.

We'll get this lined up. Push this in and then take a pry bar. Try to slide this into position. I'm just going to take a longer pry bar, pry right above the sway bar link and the frame. Just pry it down. Just try to get it over that piece right there and push the spring in. There we go. Be careful with your fingers. That's good and that's good down below. That's good up top.

We want to get this lined up at the upper control arm. Take a bolt. I put a little copper anti-seize on the bolt. Sometimes you could take a pick, or a screwdriver pick works a little bit easier. Get that to line up and then take bolt, get your bolt started. There we go.

Then I can just take a 18 millimeter socket, electric ratchet, tighten this down. That's all the way through, and we you can put the nut on the other side. Get that nut on. Take an 18 millimeter wrench. I'm going to just tighten this up. That's good. Then I'll take a torque, 18 millimeter socket, 18 millimeter wrench, and torque this to 81 foot-pounds.

Right, now I'm going to raise this trailing arm into position right there and then put the bolts in. Just get the bolts started. We've got those other front two bolts in, and now I'll raise this up, get this back one in. I can snug them all down with a 18 millimeter socket and an air gun.

I'll just loosen this pole jack, get that out of the way. I'll take a 18 millimeter socket and a torque wrench, tighten these to 57 foot-pounds. There we go. Now we'll take these ABS wire and brake sensor wire and reposition these back in the clips, and same with the clips on top. You can get these from above if you can't get them from down below.

With a screw jack, I'm just going to get underneath the trailing arm right here. You could probably put a floor jack underneath right there. I'm just going to raise this up a little bit more so that I can get the shock bolt in. Get that lined up. Get that started. Now you're going to tighten this bolt down with a torque wrench and an 18 millimeter socket. Tighten this down to 74 foot-pounds.

Anytime you do any kind of suspension work like what we did today, it's a good idea to go down to your local shop and have the vehicle aligned. That way the tires go down the road straight and you don't have premature tire wear. Now I'm going to take the wheel, slide it in position, make sure the holes lined up, and hold the wheel. I'm going to take my 17 millimeter socket and the lug stud and get one started, and I can grab the other ones. Now I'm going to use a 17 millimeter socket and a torque wrench, and I'm going to torque these lug bolts in a star pattern to 95 foot-pounds. Go right around again, just make sure everything's tight, and you're good to go.

Thanks for watching. If you want the parts to do it yourself, check out 1AAuto.com, the place for DIY auto repair.