Chevrolet GMC Front 10 Piece Steering & Suspension Kit TRQ PSA59384

One of the first things we need to do is safely raise and support the vehicle, so the wheel is off the ground. Let's remove our 22-millimeter lug nuts. Remove your wheel.

Now that the wheel's off of here, we have a clear view of the sway bar link. What you're going to notice is, up along the top, it has a strange-looking nut. It's very thin. It's going to be hard to grab onto. I'm going to use a pair of locking pliers to try to grab onto it. Using my 15-millimeter socket, I'm going to come down from the bottom here. Now I'm going to use my 14-millimeter socket down along the bottom here, see if we can get this to come apart. Looks like it's starting to turn.

Okay. So, for us, the outer sheath on this broke free from the bolt itself that's supposed to be running through the center, so I'm just going to go ahead and spray this down with some penetrant, let that soak down and through there. Sometimes, what happens is, is this outer portion will actually freeze or get stuck onto the bolt. If that's the case, what you would either want to do is grab onto the outer portion with some locking pliers, and then try to spin out that bolt. If that doesn't work, you might have to just cut the bolt itself. There's the bolt. Let's get all this out of here. Awesome.

So, now, assuming you're doing the sway bar links as a pair, now is the best time to go ahead and start doing the other side as well. Okay. Once you have both sides out, you should be able to move the bar around a little bit at this point. We're going to grab our new sway bar links. We take off the nut, take off the washer and the bushing, the washer and the bushing, and then, of course, the sheath, washer and bushing again, and we're going to leave it just like this.

Now, as we come up, okay, coming up from under the control arm, we still have the bolt with the washer and the bushing. Now we're going to take our bushing with our washer, put that facing down and towards the control arm. Grab your spacer, put that on there. We're going to push this up a little bit further. Now you're going to go washer, facing up, bushing. Get it underneath that sway bar. Bring it up. Bushing again.

If you were to look at these bushings, you can tell that they have like a rounded area, and then they have this area right here with a little like a piton. The piton is going to be going either towards the control arm or towards the sway bar. Set that on there, this one right here, and then, of course, our locking nut. I like to use a little thread locker on these.

I'm just going to use my 14-millimeter wrench, and of course, my ratchet underneath, and I'm going to start snugging it up. As I snug it, I want to be watching these bushings. What I want to see is the bushing touching up against the bar, on both sides of course. And, of course, down by the control arm there, we want those bushings to be touching up against it as well. We don't necessarily want to continue tightening, though, until the point where they seem like they're getting squished down and even pancaking out. So, let's just snug them up so they're all touching at least, and then we'll continue on.

Okay. So, this looks great. As you can tell, all of my bushings are touching exactly where they need to be touching. And you're also going to notice that I didn't continue tightening until they flattened out, like I had said before. This looks pretty great, so I'm just going to take a quick measurement of it. It looks like it's approximately the width of my thumb, personally, so I'm going to make sure that I go approximately the same on the other side of the vehicle.

Okay. Now it's going to be time to get the wheel up on here. Slide it on. Now we'll get the lug nuts on here, we'll bottom them out, and then we'll torque them to manufacturer specifications. Let's torque these lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds. Torqued.

Safely raise and support your vehicle on the frame so your suspension can hang. Now that we've safely raised the vehicle, let's remove this by using a small pry bar right in this little slot. Now you can see your 22-millimeter lug nuts, remove those. And now we'll just do the same thing to the other side. It's a great idea to spray down the area. We're going to let that sit. Obviously, if your tie rod ends look like this around the adjustment area, you're going to want to do the whole thing. If for some reason you aren't, you're going to remove these two bolts and then you'll turn this out and that will break this free.

So now that I know that I am replacing the assembly as a whole, I'm going to turn the wheel all the way to the left. That's going to give me the most area to get to that inner tie rod and stud. To start, I'm going to use my 18-millimeter half-inch drive, come right up here on the outer tie rod end nut, if you need to give it a couple of bonks, make sure you get it on there. Let's loosen this up. I'm just going to take that nut and put it back on there, just a few threads to keep myself safe.

So now we're going to break the outer tie rod end free from the knuckle right here, you can use a large hammer. You could also use a pickle fork with a hammer. If you're going to go with the hammer method, just go right here on the knuckle, it should want to break free. Make sure you have the nut on there and your safety glasses. All right, that broke free, awesome. Let's remove that inner tie right end nut. For this part right here, we're going to use one of these pickle forks. Come right in through in between the inner tie rod end and this right here, going to hammer it in. Start that on just a couple threads here. Okay, that's separated. Let's start the removal process here. Now we can move along to the next step.

So one of the first things we need to do when we get to the bench is, of course, we'll put a little bit of copper Never-Seez on our threaded area, you can go right on the tie rod ends, and maybe inside the sleeve if you wanted to. Once you have done that and you have those prepped, we're going to take a measuring tape and we're going to measure from one end of this all the way to the other end. Take a quick measurement here, and take note, looks like for me it is 16 and seven-eighths. So, what I am going to do now is I'm going to get this started onto both these tie rod ends at the same time, that is called timing the tie rod ends. We'll screw it in, and then we'll keep measuring until we get to 16 and seven-eighths, which is my measurement.

Start this on, just a couple of threads here, okay. Now I am going to do the same thing for this one, just grabbing the first thread is the hardest part usually. Now that I have both those started, I'm going to try to screw this on. Okay. So that looks pretty decent. At this point, what I want to do is make sure that I have the inner tie rod end lined up with the new inner tie rod end. That looks good, and I am going to make sure that this is aiming up in the same direction as the other one. Just like that.

And the next thing that we want to do is get these bolts so they are lined up just like that. So you can see where the open area is, that is exactly where you want the bolt to be when you crimp this down. That's how it is going to hold the threads the best. Just snug this up, and we're not going to completely tighten this up yet because, of course, we're still going to have to give it a little twist when we get in the vehicle. I just want to kind of make it so it can't flop around on me. That's pretty decent. Just snug, time to get that started in there, it's important to pay attention to your inner tie rod end which has this little blank area of the shanked end, then you have the outer tie rod end that has the threaded area pretty much the whole way. Started. Start in the outer as well, let's go ahead and bottom these out. Let's torque both these nuts to 40 foot-pounds.

So now you are going to look for your cotter pin hole. And that should be a hole that goes through the stud. It needs to line up with the castle nut here. I'm going to take one of my cotter pins and just feel around, that feels like it is almost about to go through. Something that's important to remember is if the cotter pin does not go through, or it is not lined up, you don't want to loosen it so you can put the cotter pin through. You just want to tighten to the point that you can get the cotter pin locked in. Do the same to the other one, that one I can see that it is not lined up. Just going to give it a teeny bit more. Put the cotter pin through, of course, lock it down.

The next thing you want to do is make sure that your tie rods are straight so when you're looking at 'em, you want the stud to look like it's coming straight out. If it isn't, just go ahead and give it a little twist, and then double-check the other side to make sure that that one is good. If for some reason when you have one straight and the other one is turned completely like that, that's going to cause premature wear of the tie rod ends. Make sure they are both straight, and then you can torque these down to 14 foot-pounds. We're just going to double-check the tie rods now that those are snug. That looks straight, this looks straight, perfect. Let's get the wheel on, and get it to the alignment shop.

Time to get the wheel up on here. Start on one of those lug nuts. Now we're just going to start on all the lug nuts, we'll bottom them out and then we'll torque them to 120 foot-pounds. Torque these to 120 foot-pounds. That's torqued. We'll get our cover on here, awesome. And now we'll just do the same thing to the other side. The next thing you would want to do is go ahead and get yourself an alignment.

I'm going to use a 22-millimeter socket to take off the lug nuts so we can remove the wheel, then I remove the wheel. So I'm going to use some pliers at the top of the sway bar link right there, and then underneath, I'm gonna use a 14-millimeter socket and just take the link out. A long bolt goes straight through just like that. And take the top off just like that. Now just take a pry bar underneath here. Just raise up on the sway bar, take the link out, all right. So we'll just take the new link apart, and just leave the washer and the bushing on this long bolt. And take the other bushing and the washer, line that up first.

And then this tube goes next. Slide that bolt through, and then another washer and the bushing. Align this up and slide the bushing and the washer. Pry down on the bar. And then it would help if you had someone to help you out to pry this while you're holding this and getting the nuts started. All right, that's good. And then use a 14-millimeter wrench for the nut and a 14-millimeter socket and tighten this down. And then you want to torque this to 89 inch-pounds. Make sure you're on inch-pounds, not foot-pounds. Now, put the tire back and lug nuts. Now we're gonna torque the lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds in a star pattern or a cross pattern so that it tightens the wheel down evenly. And just go around again. Double Check.

Safely raise and support your vehicle on the frame so your suspension can hang. Now that we've safely raised the vehicle, let's remove this by using a small pry bar right in this little slot.

Now you can see your 22-millimeter lug nuts; remove those.

And now we'll just do the same thing to the other side. Let's get this little plastic cover out of here. To get out the sway bar links, more than likely, you're gonna have to drop your sway bar. To do that, I would spray right inside this hole right here, try to spray the top area of that bolt, and then from the other side, spray this side as well. While you're at it, why don't you do the other side of the vehicle at the same time?
To get this one out, obviously, it's going to be a little bit difficult. You have minimal room here. Go and try to use some sort of pivoting extension or whatever you might have to get up in there. You could also use a 10-millimeter wrench if you have all day.

Let's do the same to the other side. I'm just gonna use a swivel socket to come through this hole. I want to try to find the bolt under there. I'm gonna hold that and then I'm gonna remove the nut on the top.

Okay, so that one broke. So now we're just gonna get the bar off of here. We can move this, try to get this separated real quick.
So now we have the sheath. This is a metal sheath that goes over this metal part of the bolt. Odds are that's gonna be completely rotted together. The best thing to do here would be to cut it. If you were to look right down along here, you can see exactly what I'm talking about. They left plenty of room for moisture to get in there. Let's carefully heat up the area. You obviously want to be careful for any rubber such as your axle boot, or even your ABS wire.

Now we have that nice and warm, let's go ahead and hit it was some penetrant spray. Let's clear the area, let that dissipate for a minute.

Let's get the rest of this off of there.
It doesn't look like the bushing wants to be coming out at the same time here. Get this out here, get that out of there.

Now when you're replacing the sway bar links or just the bushings, you want to obviously do those as a pair and when they're apart is the best time to do it. So now when we're getting ready to put this on, it's important to make sure you have the smaller bushing on the bottom side, that's going to make it much easier to get up through the hole in the bottom of the control arm.

Get that and the bushing right up in there. Now we're gonna go with the other bushing that has the washer on it like that. Slide it down, get your shank, slide that on there, you've got your other washer, a little thing on there. Slide that like that. This is gonna go through the bar. Now we'll grab our bushing with the washer, slide that right on there and get our locking nut, make sure you put that on as well, obviously.

Now we're gonna do the same to the other side and then we'll jump into putting back on the bushings. Now we're gonna take our 13-millimeter wrench, come through the bottom of that control arm right through the hole and try to hold the bolt. And we'll come up here with our socket and we're gonna snug this up and pay attention to the bushings for how much they try to squish down.

I'm just going to analyze these bushings real quick. What you want to look for is to make sure that they're actually touching up against the bar. They have no room for movement, and you also want to make sure that they're not necessarily squished down like a pancake. If you've done that, you're probably going to damage the bushing. All you want it to be is enough so it touches here, here, here, and then if you could see in there, of course it's touching as well. We'll do the same to the other side. Let's start all of our bolts in here that hold the sway bar bushings in.

We're gonna snug these right up. All right, make sure those are nice and tight and then do the same to the other side of the vehicle.

Time to get the wheel up on here. Start on one of those lug nuts. Now we're just gonna start on all the lug nuts. We'll bottom them out, and then we'll torque them to 120 foot-pounds.Torque these to 120 foot-pounds. It's torqued. We'll get our cover on here. Awesome. And now we'll just do the same thing to the other side.