Front 10 Piece Steering, Suspension, & Drivetrain Kit TRQ PSA56227

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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 the front strut on this 2003 GMC Envoy XL. We'll show you on the passenger's side, but the driver's side is the same procedure. The items that you'll need for this include a new front strut from 1AAuto.com, 10mm, 15mm, 17mm, 18mm, and 19mm socket, a ratchet, piece of pipe for extra leverage, a 15mm and 18mm wrench, flat blade screwdriver, torque wrench, hammer, jack and jack stands, pry bar, and a 4.5mm Allen wrench. We recommend that if you replace the strut on one side, that you do it on the other side as well.

Start off by prying off your hub cap, and then just loosen out this 35mm nut. Now, loosen the lug nuts in a crossing pattern. We'll just fast-forward as Mike does this. Once you've loosened them, just jack the vehicle up, then remove the lug nuts the rest of the way. Now, the wheel will pull off.

Now, you want to remove these two 17mm bolts. You can see Mike is using an 18mm wrench to hold the nut on the inside. It will just make it easier to remove that bolt. Now, using a flat blade screwdriver, just pry out on the caliper, and then you can just set that aside. Now, pry out your brake pads. Now, you want to remove these two 18mm bolts. We'll just fast-forward as Mike does that. You can see, he's using a piece of pipe for some extra leverage to help brake those bolts free. Once those are removed, the bracket will pull right off. If your rotor doesn't slide right off then you may just want to tap it with a hammer, turn it, and then hit it again with a hammer.

Right, so if you have trouble getting the rotor off, it actually has press holes. You would get a bolt that's the proper size. I believe this is an M12 bolt. Use two bolts, thread them into those holes. As you tighten them up, they press against the hub and push the rotor off.

To get your axle out, maybe use a pry bar or some other the long item. You will put it up, in, and put it on the back of the axle right where it connects to the transmission or the axle, I should say. Make sure you're hitting the metal and it comes right out.

If you want to do the driver's side, you'll need to remove these four 15mm bolts and pull this panel down in order to access it. Using a 15mm socket, ratchet, and wrench, just remove this bolt. We'll fast-forward as Mike does that. Now, using a hammer, just hit the upper control line off the ball joint. Now, just pry open this clip and pull the harness free. You want to secure your caliper to somewhere out of the way, so we'll just wire-tie it right here on to the back end plate.

Now, you want to remove these 10mm bolts. We'll fast-forward as Mike does that. Now, just lift up on the upper control arm, pull this back, and make sure that the axle is loosened. Pull your axle the rest of the way out of the differential. You step around a little bit, and you can get it going up in. Just got to ankle it up, get it going up and in a little bit from the hub. Careful with all of your ABS wires, hoses and stuff.

Just spray this bolt right here on your sway bar link with some penetrating oil. Then, using a 15mm wrench and a 4.5mm Allen wrench (you can use some other wrench with some extra leverage on the Allen wrench), you want to just separate that nut and remove it. Next, you want loosen up these two 15 mm bolts. Just spray them with some penetrating oil. Then we'll just fast-forward as Mike loosens those up. Just push the wheel knuckle up, and then loosen those just so that they're finger tight and just a few threads on. That will hold the strut in place.

Then you want to remove this 18mm bolt right here. Using your socket, ratchet, and a piece of pipe just brake that free. Once you remove the nut, just tap out the bolt a little bit. You'll notice the brake lines in the way, so you just need to use a pry bar and pry that bolt out the rest of the way. Just lift up on the wheel knuckle, and then that will allow you to pull that out.

Spray some penetrating oil around the base of the strut, and then just hammer the wheel knuckle off with the strut. To keep the wheel knuckle from going all over the place, we're just going to wire tie it up. If you do this, you want to make sure that it's still kind of loose so you can still move the upper control arm up and down. Then remove those two 15mm nuts at the top of the strut, and just maneuver the strut down and out.

On the bottom is the old strut; above it is the new strut from 1A Auto. You can see they're identical, and they'll fit exactly the same.

Feed your new strut up into place. Then once you get the studs through, just replace those two 15mm nuts to hold it in place. Place a jack underneath the lower control arm. I've also got the lift where you have jack stands next to the vehicle. Just line up the strut and jack up the control arm into the strut. We will fast-forward as Mike tightens up that bolt. Now, just torque this bolt to 90 foot-pounds. Tighten up those two 15mm nuts and torque them to 50 foot-pounds.

We'll fast-forward as Mike replaces the nut in the sway bar. Using his 4.5 mm Allen wrench and his wrench, he's going to tighten that back up. As you're tightening up that final bit, make sure you have a wrench between the Allen wrench and the sway bar so you can still remove the Allen wrench from that bolt. Then just clip those wire ties if you ended up using them. Be careful not to hit wires. I just set it right into the hub and pull it, staying up around, and get it all the way into the hub. Then pull on it and feed it into the axle. Careful with the seal. You want to put that in, just doing a kind of back up in place that you go. Do not overextend. Just put that in place and push your axle right in and make sure it's locked.

Now, replace your brake line bracket in the two 10mm bolts to hold it into place. You want to just use the upper control arm to hold the wheel knuckle in place while you're doing this. Re-clip this harness. Now, hammer your upper control arm back down into the old one. Replace the bolt and the nut and tighten them up. You want to make sure that these holes line up in between the two holes that are on the hub. Then you just slide your rotor back into place and replace the lug nut to hold it into place. You want to check these slides on your caliper bracket and make sure they're greased up. If they're not, just apply some brake grease to them. Then fit the bracket into place. You can then just start twisting in your bolts by hand and then tighten them up.

Now, torque these two bolts to 110 foot-pounds. Torque each of these to 110 foot-pounds and then just replace your brake pads. If there's no grease on the ends, just apply some brake grease. Now, push your caliper back down into place and replace those two 17mm bolts. We'll fast-forward as Mike does that and tightens those up. Now, torque each of those to 40 foot-pounds.

Replace the hub nut. Remove the lug nut that you put on there to hold the rotor in place. Then put your wheel in place. Then replace each of the lug nuts and tighten them preliminarily. Now, torque each of these to 100 foot-pounds in a crossing pattern. Then torque the hub nut to 103 foot-pounds. Then replace your hub cap.

After you've done any work on the brakes, you want to just pump the brake pedal until it firms out. Then you want to do a stopping test from 5 miles per hour and 10 miles per hour.

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.

Okay, friends. One of the first things we need to do to start this job is to safely raise and support the vehicle. I like to raise it directly on the frame. Once you have the wheel off the ground, we're going to remove our center cover. That exposes our 19-millimeter lug nuts. Remove them all, and then remove the wheel. Now that we have the wheel off of here, we have a clear view of our front strut. Let's start off by spraying everything that's going to need to come apart with some penetrant. Right down here, let's go ahead and get a little bit right in there for the threads.

Up along this area, go ahead and spray that bolt. And then, of course, this area up top, you're going to see right along the top of this strut tower there's two studs that come up. We're going to spray those so the nuts will come off. Right down this side too. Use your 24-millimeter socket to remove this nut. The next thing we need to do is separate this lower portion from the stud right here. To do that, you can use a punch with a hammer and try to come from this side and drive it out towards the front or, of course, if you have an air chisel like I do. So that broke free. That's perfect.

The next thing we need to do is get up top underneath the hood. So now under the hood, as you can tell, we can see the nuts on the top of those struts. We're not going to touch the center one. Do not touch that. Do this one right here and that one over there. These are 18-millimeter. Here's one nut. I'm just going to start it on there just a couple of threads. Remove the other one. All right. There's that one. Get the other one off. Let's go back into the wheel well. Let's go ahead and grab onto that. Pull it aside and then carefully drop it down and remove it from the vehicle.

Now that we have this out of the vehicle, we're going to go ahead and hold onto the bolt side of this with our 18-millimeter and then remove the nut side also with an 18-millimeter. Now I'm going to come from the other side with my air gun here or use whatever you want to remove this, but spin it out. Go ahead and put our nut on there just a little bit so we don't damage the threads and then give it a couple of loving bonks. That's moving right along. Take it right out. Something that we want to pay attention to before we go too much further is the orientation of this piece right here.

If you were to look at it, you're going to see it would run directly along here, and it's going to line up with one of the studs. It doesn't matter which one, just make sure it does line up when you come time to install. Now it's going to be time to go ahead and try to get this off of here. Something to pay attention to is the fact that we're going to have to hit it with a hammer. We're going to be trying to drive it off of the strut itself. As it starts coming off, there's also the possibility that it could come flying off and potentially hurt you.

Obviously, nobody wants you to get hurt. So I just want to mention, be careful for where this goes when it comes off. Grab your hammer or whatever you might have and go ahead and give it a couple of bonks. You might happen to notice that it just doesn't want to come off of there. If that's the case, go ahead and hit it with some more penetrant. Once you have a good amount of penetrant in there, go ahead and use a nice chisel or a punch, whatever you have that's going to be able to spread these ears a little bit.

As we spread these, something to pay attention to is you don't want to keep spreading them until the point where they start to crack or get brittle. You definitely don't want to damage this piece in any way. As I just spreaded those ears, what I saw was this started to let go. I'm going to give it a little wiggle. This is great. Just try to work that penetrant in there. So we got our new strut here. One of the first things we need to do to get this into the vehicle is, of course, get that bottom piece on there. To do that we're going to put a nice piece of wood on the floor, and we're going to turn this upside down.

I'm going to rest it just like this. Pay attention to where those studs are. Okay? Because that was important. I mentioned it before. When we go to install this, we want this arm that's coming out going in a straight line. You can see there's a dot, a dot, a stud. Try to make it a nice straight line. If you put it like this, obviously, it's going to cause an issue when it comes time to install. So we'll get it as close as possible. Now that we've got that nice and covered, let's go ahead and get this lined up straight as possible here. Oh, it looks pretty great.

Give it a couple of loving bonks. Now, as I'm doing this, you can tell the reason why I wanted to use wood on the bottom there. We've got all those studs coming down, and the last thing I want to do is mess anything up. As we bring this down, you're going to want to keep going until it bottoms out on this ridge right here. Looks like it's pretty much there. Double-check it all the way around just to make sure it's completely seated. So now let's take our unit. We're going to slide it right in, get it up into those, and then slide it on this stud down here.

Everything should line up perfectly. If it doesn't, and for some reason, you can't get it in here or you can't line up the top, obviously, the issue is right here. You just didn't line it up properly. I usually like to put a tiny bit of threadlocker on this right here, and then we'll get the nut on. We'll bottom it out. Let's go ahead and torque this to 81 foot-pounds as well. It's going to be time to put in the lower bolt for the strut here. Goes through from the inside or towards the inside of the vehicle here and then going out. Let's go ahead and bottom this out, and then we'll torque it to manufacturer's specifications.

Now we're going to torque this to 81 foot-pounds. There we are. Let's take our two upper mounting nuts. We'll get those on. We'll bottom them out, and then we'll torque them to manufacturer's specifications as well. Torque these to 33 foot-pounds. It's always a great idea to double-check everything that you removed and replaced. Just make sure everything's secure and good to go. Once you've done that, let's go ahead and get the wheel up on here. Bring the vehicle down so the tire's just barely touching the ground so it can't spin. And then torque the wheels in a criss-cross manner to 103 foot-pounds.

Now it's going to be time to get our center cover on here. If you were to turn it around, you might see something that looks a lot like a valve stem. Line it up with your valve stem, and then go ahead and pop it on there.

Okay, friends. One of the first things we need to do to start this job is to safely raise and support the vehicle. I like to raise it directly on the frame. Once you have the wheel off the ground, we're gonna remove our center cover. That exposes our 19-millimeter lug nuts. Remove them all, and then remove the wheel. The next thing I like to do is remove the caliper from the bracket directly. The reason for that is because I like to take a look at the pads when I'm taking everything apart. I'm gonna use an 18-millimeter to hold the slider from spinning, and then I'm gonna come right from the backside of the caliper, and I'm gonna remove my 13-millimeter nuts that hold the caliper to the bracket. Okay. I've got both our bolts here. Slide the caliper off. It's always a great idea to inspect the caliper directly. Look along these boots to make sure you don't see any moisture or anything like that, and you also wanna make sure that the piston itself isn't chipped or broken in any way. Let's get the pads off of here. Feels as though this rearward one's frozen in there. There we are. I usually like to turn the wheel a little bit so I can expose these 18-millimeter headed bolts. We're gonna remove both those bolts that holds the bracket to the knuckle. I'm gonna leave that in just a little bit. Remove the other one. Grab that bracket, and remove the other bolt. There it is, friends. Now it's time to remove the rotor.

Next, we're gonna use a little bit of penetrant. We're gonna come right here along where the axle nut is, and then we're gonna come along the wheel bearing where it connects onto the knuckle. We wanna try to spray down that area with some penetrant, and if you can see the bolts coming through the wheel bearing, spray those areas as well. Let's remove that axle nut. The next thing we need to do is make sure that our axle can move around inside the wheel bearing. If for some reason the axle does not slide in and out, take a punch, take a hammer, go right in this center hole, get it to break free. If that's not working, go ahead and spray inside there with some penetrant spray. The next thing we need to do is disconnect and unsecure our ABS wire so when we remove the wheel bearing, it'll be ready to come out. If you were to look at the frame, you're gonna see this area right here. It has a couple wires coming in, a couple wires going out. This area leading towards the front is actually part of the ABS wire we're gonna be removing. So we need to come right here and disconnect this. Just take my little pocket screwdriver. I'll pull it like that until I can see that white piece is pressed up against here, and then you press on this area, and you should be able to take these two apart. There we are.

Now what we need to do is use our little forky tool here or a pry bar or whatever you might have. We're gonna try to get in between this piece and the frame because there's gonna be a little push clip or piton that forces in. I'll show you what it looks like. There it is. That just forces right inside this hole, and it holds it secure. The new wheel bearing is gonna come with all new clips, so you don't have to worry about breaking them. That one out of there. Okay. A lot of times the clips that go up into the control arm, they kinda get stuck up in there. You can try to pry it out of there. More than likely it's gonna break the little piton going up in. So if you wanted to, if you were to look right along this side, you can see an area that we can press with a small pocket screwdriver, and it'll let this come down. That's the way I'm gonna remove this one. Get this one off of here. For this one, you need to squeeze these two tabs right here. Give them a little squeeze with some pliers and should pry off. There we go, friends. Now what we need to do is come from the backside of this knuckle here. If you were to look along where the axle goes through the knuckle, you're gonna see where the bolts are that hold the wheel bearing to the knuckle. We're gonna use an 18-millimeter to remove all 3. There's one of my bolts. Do the same to all.

The next thing that I like to do is use this ABS wire. We're not gonna be reusing it, so this is okay. I'm gonna take it, and I'm just gonna tie it right around the knuckle, just like this. The reason for that is because now what I need to do is start bonking on this with a hammer carefully and try to break it free from the knuckle. When it does break free, the last thing that I want is for it to come shooting off and potentially hurt me. So, this kinda acts as a safety net. Let's go ahead and start hitting this with the hammer. There we are. As you can tell, my safety net worked well. We'll just go ahead and get the backing plate off of here. There it is, friends. The next thing we need to do at this point is to clean up this area. All the areas that you notice where the wheel bearing was sitting up against the knuckle need to be nice and clean. The wheel bearing needs to be able to ground thoroughly through the knuckle. Use something like a scraper, a screwdriver if you have to. You could use a little brush. Use whatever you need to, but try to get off the majority of this rust, especially any raised areas. The next thing we would wanna do is clean up the backing plate the same way. Clean up both sides, the area that's gonna be up against here and then, of course, the area that the bearing's gonna be against. Once you've done that, go ahead and take your bolts. Make sure that they're clean.

These look like they could use a cleanup, so I'm gonna take them to the wire wheel. After I've done that, I'm gonna apply a little bit of threadlocker. So I've got these cleaned up. I've got a little bit of threadlocker on there. The next thing we're gonna do is use a little bit of copper Never-Seez, try to get around the areas where the bearing's gonna be resting in here. It's just gonna help make it come out easier next time. I also like to get the splines on the axle. Now we have our backing plate nice and cleaned up. We did both sides where the bearing's gonna ride like I said. Go ahead and take that ABS wire that comes from your wheel bearing. Slide it right down and through the center there. That's great. Now we're gonna line up the slot with where this is gonna go through, and then we're gonna put the whole unit up on to the knuckle just like this. Now something that's important to remember is that you wanna have the slot in the backing plate facing to where the caliper is. So if I was to put this in like that, it's not gonna be right. You're gonna wanna go twisting it until it lines up right like this. Let's get the ABS wire out of there. Perfect. Let's go ahead and start in those bolts. Now let's just go ahead and bottom out those bolts. Torque these to 77 foot-pounds. Now it's gonna be time to get our ABS wire back resecured.

We wanna make sure that it doesn't get damaged by hanging around and flopping and all that stuff. So, just take a look at it and take a look at all the areas that we left on here for clips. Any of those corresponding areas, we'll just take them off of the new one, okay? So I've got this clip that just comes around back here. It's gonna slide in. That's the one we got with the pliers. You remember that one. We'll bring this up through here. This one, obviously, we can take this off of here. We'll recycle that. Once up here, click it in. Same thing right here. We'll get this one off of there as well. Put this up in here. Latch it in. Make sure you give it a nice tug. All right. So now we're just gonna follow this and put it back in everywhere where it goes in. That one in there. Now we'll clip these together. Make sure you lock it in, give it a nice tug, and then secure it. Double-check all your anchor points. Make sure that there's no way that this ABS wire can come loose. The last thing you want is for it to get damaged. The next thing we're gonna do is get our axle nut back on here. I like to use a little bit of threadlocker. We'll put it on, bottom it out, and then we'll torque it to manufacturer's specifications. Now to torque this axle nut, what you're probably gonna find is that as you try to turn this to tighten it, the bearing's gonna keep spinning. To cure that, you can use a nice long pry bar. Come right in between the lug studs.

You wanna make sure it's nice and flat so you don't damage the threads. Now we're gonna torque this to 103 foot-pounds. Going with the assumption you're not replacing your brakes or your rotors, you're gonna wanna clean up the mounting area that goes up against where the bearing is. Now we're gonna go ahead and spray down this area of the hub with some copper Never-Seez. Put our rotor on, and then grab one of your lug nuts and start it in so it holds the rotor so it doesn't move around. Next, it's gonna be time to go ahead and push in the caliper pistons. What you'll notice, if you were trying to use a tool that looks like this, which is what most people have, is you would go inside like this, squeezing this piston. As you squeeze this one in, this one would start coming out. That could be an issue. If you're using this tool, the best way to do it would be to go ahead and take one of your old brake pads and then go ahead and grip right in the center and squeeze it down. For me personally, I have this tool right here. As you crank it, it's gonna push in both these pistons at the same time. You could also use this at the same time if you wanted to. Put this in. Now we're just gonna slowly push in the pistons. The next step for preparing this is we wanna add a tiny bit of lubricant along the pistons themselves and then along each of these three ears.

The reason for doing this is for vibration dampening and noise reduction. Time to get the caliper bracket on. Go ahead and take your caliper bolts and use a tiny bit of threadlocker. Let's get these started. Torque these to 118 foot-pounds. Now it's gonna be time to get the brake pads onto the vehicle. What you're gonna notice is you should have some wear indicators. They probably came in your little bag. You can go ahead and squeeze that right onto the pads, and you want them both facing just like this. When we install these, we want the brake indicators facing up. See if I can slide this in here. Should slide in nice and easy. If you have to force it in or use a hammer for any reason, you probably didn't clean up the bracket enough. These look great. Make sure they can move around freely. Go ahead and take that caliper and slide it over. Put it right down on there. Now we're gonna grab our caliper mounting bolts. We've got our caliper bolts with a teeny bit of threadlocker. Start them in, bottom them out, and then we'll torque them down. Let's torque these to 31 foot-pounds. It's always a great idea to double-check everything that you removed and replace. Just make sure everything's secure and good to go. Once you've done that, let's go ahead and get the wheel up on here.

Bring the vehicle down so the tire's just barely touching the ground so we can't spin, and then torque the wheels in a crisscross manner to 103 foot-pounds. Now it's gonna be time to get our center cover on here. If you were to turn it around, you might see something that looks a lot like a valve stem. Line it up with your valve stem and then go ahead and pop it on there. All right. Now I know you think you're done, but you still need to pump up the brake pedal, and then we're gonna go out there and double-check that brake fluid level. Right underneath the hood, you're gonna see your master cylinder. It'll tell you what type of fluid to use. You can give it a little shake and just double-check to make sure you can see it's up at that maximum line.