Front Upper Control Arm Bushing Replacement

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[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome to Toyota time with Timmy the tool man and Sean we have returning gas Jordan and we like Jordan so we're gonna help him out with another repair Jordan wants to replace the bushings in his upper control arm so just like we showed in part two in the lower control arm bushing video series we're gonna utilize our Harbor Freight 20-ton press with the bearing splitter and we're gonna press those bushings out and then use the press to press the new bushings in for the upper control arm bushings there are aftermarket choices but from what I've seen there isn't anything that I've heard that is a better choice than OEM for the lower control arm bushings white line is a pretty good choice and a lot of people have gone that route including myself but for the upper control arms I would suggest going om and that's what Jordan did so this is an OEM upper control arm bushing all the bushings are exactly the same there's not different part numbers for the Ford bushing or the rear bushing they're all the same part number and here's the part number right here four eight six three two three five zero eight zero to get ready for this job we have the front end of the vehicle jacked up we have it supported on each frame rail with the six ton jack stand and we have the wheels chopped so the vehicle can't move let's get going the first thing we're gonna do is we're just gonna get this upper part of the mud flap out of the way because we're gonna be pulling out the long bolt and just for ease of access folding this thing down out of our way is gonna make it easier for us so there's two plastic Clips up here and George is gonna take a little special pry tool it's got a forked end he's gonna get in between the fender well and the clip and pry it out so now that's folded up out of the way and it gives us a better view of the bowl head next thing jordans you'll do is gonna remove the cotter pin of the castle nut he's just using a needle nose pliers if you live in rusty areas you might find that that cotter pin is rusted in so it might be a fight for Jorden it looks like it's coming out no problem now we're gonna zip out this nineteen millimeter castle nut Jordan's gonna use my little Dewalt impact we'll see if they could take it off no problem okay now to break free the upper ball joint from the upper control arm we're gonna utilize a long arm puller so this is the long arm polar that we're going to use this is part of a kit that I bought from OTC and I'll put a link in the video description so if if you would like to buy the same kit you can purchase it so Jordans gonna capture the edges of the upper control arm in that fashion one arm near the spring and the other arm facing directly out towards the tire for this particular puller or needs a 16 millimeter socket or open and wrench your box and wrench to turn it so he's just getting on there with a big 1/2 inch drive ratchet 16 millimeter socket just putting pressure on the top of that spindle till it gives just like so now that the knuckle is free you don't want it just to be pulling on the brake lights we're gonna support this somehow to where it's not pulling tension on the brake line Jordans just gonna use a short piece of baling wire and support the knuckle by tying it to the spring point the pointy edges away from you the next thing that we have to do is we got to get the long bolt out that holds the upper control arm to the frame so George is going to lubricate the end of the threads with a little wd-40 because it's kind of dirty and that nut for the long bolt is a 19 millimeter so Jordan just get in on it with a big long 19 millimeter box and wrench there we go he saw it took tension off and just flopped down so the nut is spinning the whole thing so I'm actually putting a 19 millimeter box in on the bolt head so Jordan can get the nut off the next thing we have to do is we got to slide that bolt out but there's things in the engine bay against the fender well that are gonna stop the bull from coming out so now we're gonna go into the engine bay I show you what I'm talking about I'm pointing at the head of the long bolt right here right in front of it is the AC line and the AC line attaches to the fender well Ford right below this electrical connector there's a plastic clip so we have to pull the line out of the plastic clip to give the bolt a path to come out so George with his hands pull on that AC line and pull it out of the clip one thing to note that this is an airbag sensor so be careful when you're jostling that AC line right near it because you wouldn't want your airbags being deployed and then further back on the fender well there was another clip that Jordan released and now the line has a lot of play to where we can get that bolt slid out now now that the AC line is out of our way Jordan could now start sliding that bolt through this might happen to you so the bolt head is dragging on the fender so we're just going to take a pry bar and do a little bit of manipulation to bend that one little side of the fender out of the way so from up above I have a big pry bar in between the head of the bolt and the fender and I'm just prying out a little bit to give a little more room let's see if that's good now Tim there we go now we're free it didn't take much and now dog head of the vault has cleared the fender so what Jordan is doing is he's got the shaft of the ball in the hand and he keeps on pushing the washer back so he can continue to get the Bulldog because if the washer hits the fender then everything stops and it's such a long bolt that it comes all the way back and actually hits the radiator or the AC lines right at the front of the vehicle so now with the bolt out this thing could just pull right out like so so it's totally up to you if your bolt looks like it's a good shape and it's not all rusty I suggest just letting it lay right in the engine bay because there's no real need to take it out cuz you're just going to be putting it back in anyways just like in part two of the lower control arm bushing replacement video in order to use the hydraulic press to do the bushing removal we have to get a bearing splitter in between the sleeve of the bushing and the control arm the purpose of the bearing splitter is it's going to support the arm while we're pressing out the bushing to get the bearing splitter in place we're gonna bend the flange of this bushing out a little bit so what Jordans gonna do he's gonna take chisel with a hammer and he's gonna hammer this flange outward we're gonna get one side of the bearing splitter on this side of the arm and then we're gonna get the other side of the bearing splitter on this side you have to bend it out on this edge and then on the opposing edge on the other side we now have the sleeve of the bushing bent out enough to where the blade of the bearing splitter can get a good bite on the sleeve of the control arm you just do the same with the other side you bend down the flange of the bushing sleeve to where you can get the bearing splitter when you get near this side right here this part of the control arm kind of gets in the way of the bigger chisel so if you use a tool like this like a big long punch a heavy-duty punch you can get in there a little easier than the chisel the next thing you do is you get the bearing splitter on both sides of the bushing and then you tighten these nuts to where the blades of the bearing splitter get in position to where it's gonna be supporting the arm you don't want to crank on the nuts too tight to where the blades actually start firmly grabbing the actual bushing itself you just have to Snug it up pretty good but don't crank on it with all your might now we've got to bring this over to the press and get the bushing up just like in part two of the lower control arm bushing replacement video we're gonna use the same technique of putting a big press sleeve on the top to give the bushing somewhere to go and then we need something on the bottom to drive the bushing out with and I found out that a 27 millimeter impact socket captures the bushing really well but it's still small enough that it doesn't get stuck in the arm of the control arm so that's going to be on the bottom so right now we have a little pressure being applied by the 20-ton press we've got the adapter that comes with the press leaf kit and I'll put a link in the video description to the press sleep kit I bought off at eBay big press leaf to receive the bushing big bearing splitter I'll also put a link in the video description for this bearing splitter from OTC and a 27 millimeter impact socket so as we drive force down with the press the 27 millimeter impact sock it's gonna start pushing the bushing through the arm and into the upper sleeve I usually use heat but I'm gonna try it without heat and just see how it goes it looked like the arm was getting a little crooked so we stopped and reset if you find that when you're pressing and you're starting to load up the press and nothing's happening I suggest you reset and try again this is our second attempt here oh yeah okay excellent alright we finally got movement good didn't really even take that much force and it's a nice steady push we use no heat on the end of the arm to make it easier this is just pure force from the hydraulic press getting this pushing out and there it goes it's free Wow look at that and there's the bushing let's take a look at the arm did we do any damage to the arm we've got a slight indentation on the sleeve here so it wasn't biting as quite as far as we've now wasn't quite it wasn't quite as far as we wanted to take a note next time we'll bend the flange back further yeah we'll have to bend the flange back a little bit further so we can get the bearing splitter in a little bit deeper yeah this is what the opposing arm looks like after we got done with pressing by bending out the sleeve of the bushing a little bit further and getting a better bite with the jaws of the bearing splitter we didn't do really any damage to the arm which is what we wanted we also learned if you use a press leave that sits in this concave section the bearing splinter it wants to walk on you and move a little bit so this time we chose a press leave that's really wide that actually sits on the flat parts of the bearing splitter this way it was a more firmer platform and it didn't want to move on us now that we have both bushings out of the control arm Jordan is using some Emery cloth and he's just cleaning up the inner diameter getting any rust out of there any dirt debris so it's ready to receive the new bushings here's something to note this is actually the driver side control arm you'll notice that the sleeve of the bushing isn't bottomed out on the actual control arm and so when we do the press work we have to be mindful that that we don't want to bury the bushing all the way in we want to leave what it looks like about two millimeters and this is important because as the bushing comes through the other side if it pushes through it too far it's gonna be too tight and we're not going to be able to slide the control arm in place we're gonna press the bushings in with about two millimeters of space between the sleeve of the bushing and the control arm and then we're gonna test fit and see how well it fits if it needs a little more adjustment then we'll press it a little bit further but better to start off with the sleeve of the bushing further out than too far in we're ready to press the new bushings in the way we have it setup first of all we had to lower the crossmember of my Harbor Freight press when we started the job we were on the second hole now we're down to the third hole we have one of the press sleeve adapters on the bottom supporting a sleeve that supports the arm but the inner diameter of this sleeve is big enough for the bushing to be able to go through a little bit on top we're gonna put the new bushing in and it fits in quite a ways before it actually starts getting tight now we have to grab another press leave that's gonna capture this sleeve of the bushing so we don't want to actually be putting pressure on the rubber we just want to be putting pressure on this metal outer sleeve it's going to go wider than the rubber part of the bushing now we're gonna get another adapter plate on the top and then we're gonna Center it underneath the press one thing that I have done with bushing says I've put a nice ease or maybe some grease we're thinking that it's optional you don't necessarily have to do it if you want to put some anti-seize on there puts a multi-purpose grease whatever you want we're going dry on this one we have a little bit of pressure being applied holding everything together as a last check just make sure everything's square the bottom sleeve a square with the control arm the upper sleeve is square with the bushing everything's in line and now we're ready to start pressing now remember we don't want to bottom out this sleeve of the bushing so we're gonna stop at right around two millimeters of gap between the sleeve of the bushing and the control arm I have a ruler that's working as a good feeler gauge to let us know when we're right at about two millimeters stop right there I think yeah we're there so we're right at about a two millimeter gap and we're gonna call that good and do the other side so you'll see that we still have a gap between the sleeve of the bushing and the control arm that's basically perfect right there we're probably gonna find that once we get the control arm in its gonna fit nicely so as we test fit the upper control arm where we've left about two millimeters of gap we're seeing contrary to our expectations there's some gap here so really the bushings do need to be driven in further so this caused us to say okay what's going on if the bushings were pressed in like this before how come there wasn't a gap when we pulled it out so let's go back to the bench and look at the bushings and compare them we're trying to understand why we press these two apparently the same spot but now have a gap when we install it onto the sleeve on the frame so when you look at the two bushings here's a new one and here's one of the old ones that came out we compared the outer sleeves are the same distance we can measure the inner sleeves we're wondering maybe the inner sleeves are longer for some reason 52.6 and change 52.6 so they're the same but upon inspection what we notice is that looking at the old ones the inner sleeve is actually pushed out with respect to the outer sleeve a little bit more if you compare these two you can see the difference can you see the difference there so my theory is that Toyota installed the bushings like this for some reason they're you know not pressed in all the way that perhaps helps them with assembly or something or tolerances from truck to truck frame to frame when this goes on there and gets installed as the bolt tightens it pushes the inner collars inward and then it lives like that its whole life and so the rubber actually creeps that way the rubber has basically crept making it appear like this is where it always was so what we're gonna do is press these in further because I would like these rubber bushings to be at a neutral position not pushed in or pushed out when they're bolted on to the frame I concur so we ended up pressing one side all the way till it bottoms and then we test fitted it and realized that if we bottomed this one out we would actually have gone a little too far so it's happy spot ended up being with just a little bit of gap here maybe about one millimeter at this point it slides on to that part of the frame with just the tiniest bit of interference so you'd note that these are not exactly equal we've got basically zero gap in about one millimeter of gap here I don't know that that makes any difference I think the moral of the story here is as you press these in don't just assume that both need to be totally bottomed out leave yourself a little bit of gap on both sides and test fit it and press it in until it's right where it wants to be from experience getting the upper control arm back on the vehicle is best done with two people one person is in the engine bay pushing the bolt through while another person at the fender well is holding the control arm square to the frame while the bolt is sliding through you can't do it by yourself I've actually done it on my 98 4runner putting the lift on I did it all by myself but it's a lot easier with an extra set of hands so I'm up in the engine bay Jordan's got to get the washer on there for me first so remember that the concave side of the washer faces the bolt head I'm gonna start sliding it through the washer and the one side of the control arm and then I'm just pushing pushing pushing get my hand in there trying it kind of hard to film and do this at the same time slide it in slide it in it's all the way there now Jordan could get the washer and the nut on the other side same thing the concave side faces the nut and the convex side faces the bushing now with suspension components the rule of thumb is you don't tighten anything to spec until you have the weight of the vehicle on the suspension and the reason for that is if we tighten up this control arm and loaded the bushings and the arm isn't in its normal travel path it's not good for the bushing so once the weight of the vehicle is settled onto the wheels that's when we torque that upper bolt to its spec we're not gonna mess with tightening that bolt just yet but we're now gonna work on getting the upper ball joint reconnected to the upper control arm so George is undoing the baling wire we are using it to hold the knuckles a wooden foot strain on the brake line okay Jordan is now going to torque this to the spec the spec for the castle nut for the upper ball joint is 80 foot-pounds now he's gonna have to get a cotter pin in there and it looks like he's gonna have to tighten it a little more to get a cotter pin in there so use your tool of choice he just has to line up the hole in the council nut so we can get the cotter pin in so now he has the hole in the spindle of the upper ball joint lined up with a slot in the castle nut and he could get a cotter pin in there it's always good practice to use a fresh cotter pin don't reuse them and this is pretty much one side done the final step is just getting the wheel on getting the weight of the vehicle in the wheels and then torquing that upper bolt that holds the control arm to the frame 287 foot-pounds the driver's side on Jordans rig causes some additional problems to get the bolt of the upper control arm out Jordans vehicle is a 4 cylinder 2.7 liter engine and it's similar in the respect that you do have to remove a couple things so number one there's a bracket here that holds this wiring loom to the fender well there's a 10 millimeter bolt that holds it to the frame so we got in there with a small quarter inch ratchet and a 10 millimeter socket and we loosen that the next thing that's in the way you can't really see because the batteries in the way there's another electrical connection that's stopping the bolt from being able to come all the way up there's a bracket that goes over the top that holds the battery firmly in place in the engine compartment Jordan already removed that top strap you have to loosen both of your battery cables the negative and the positive that's a 10 millimeter and then now we can pull the battery out we want to remove this tray out of the way now we have a much better view of what's stopping us so this electrical connection right here as we try to slide the bolt out it's gonna come right into this electrical connector so it looks like all we have to do is take two 10 millimeter bolts out one here and one here off the top of my head I don't remember this being an issue with the 3.4 liter engine but it might be I might be remembering wrong but I do remember at the very least we had to undo a bracket that held this wiring loom to the fender this is the actual bolt hole right here that we took the 10 millimeter bolt out Jordan just gonna get on there with a small ratchet and take those out all right now we've got free sailing so we're gonna do the same thing Jordan's gonna get underneath and he's gonna be holding the upper control arm and then maybe actually he can get his fingers in there keeping that washer against the bushing while I'm pulling back on the bolt it's actually hitting the overflow reservoir let's see if I can get that sucker out there yeah there we go so with a little bit of pulling it towards the radiator I was able to get it out of the way of the overflow reservoir there's no need to show the press work on the other side because it's the same thing we're gonna use the same techniques so we're gonna get that press work done and then finalize the job one thing that we didn't note that I'll note now is that on the driver side we again had to take this rubber flap off to get access to the bolt easier but also on the back side there's this hard plastic one that we had to get out of the way too this is just an additional mud cover same thing get the little tool behind there over screwdriver and pull free the plastic clips so you can get this up out of your way we have the battery back end we have the wiring loom bracket reconnected we have that electrical connector bracket reconnected we've got the wheels on and now we're ready to lower the vehicle to the ground we're torquing the upper control arm bolt to 87 foot-pounds it's a little tight to get in there with the tire but this is the best way to do it so he's getting about one clip at a time here all right 87 foot pounds now think you got the upper control arm bolts torqued to spec you want to get your mud flaps back in place so utilizing the clips hopefully you didn't break any of them and you just push them back in and then on this driver side he's you have to get the hard plastic one in there - there we go and it's all done the final step and this is one you don't want to forget is torque your wheel lug nuts I usually use a torque spec of 85 foot-pounds Jordan likes to use 80 so we're going to torque the lug nuts all right we're done with this job and typical team in the Toolman fashion you can see there's tools and stuff everywhere after these jobs we successively showed you how to replace your upper control arm bushings by utilizing Harbor Freight 20-ton press with the bearing splitter and with the press leaf kit press work is one of those things that your imagination is the only thing that limits you there's a lot of ingenious people that come up with ways to MacGyver all different ways to press things out so if you don't have a 20-ton press and the bearing splitter and the press leave kit I'm sure other people are going to be able to figure out a different way to do this that's just how Jordan I chose to do this job we thank you for watching Toyota time with Timmy the tool man and Shawn thank you for watching thank you for subscribing if you have any questions or comments do that below take care bye bye
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Channel: Timmy The Toolman
Views: 109,004
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Toyota, 4runner, Tacoma, 3rd Gen, UCA, UCA Bushing, UCA Bushing Replacement, Replacement, Timmy the Toolman, Repair, Mechanic, DIY, Bushing, 20 Ton Press, Bearing Splitter, Tundra, Fix, How to, Toyota Time
Id: _lZbAd1_EUM
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 28min 12sec (1692 seconds)
Published: Mon Apr 30 2018
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