OBS Chevy Truck Handling Overhaul on the CHEAP

do you own an 88 to 98 chevy or gmc truck and the steering is just worn out maybe you want to get an alignment because you just got new tires but when you took it to the shop just like i did they said you know what we can't align this thing because the parts are just too beat up well i have a solution on how to fix that very inexpensive let me tell you about the kit that i bought how much it cost and what it can do for the steering and handling of your obs truck i purchased all these parts myself i'm not sponsored in any way by 1a auto i am just telling you what i found online so like i mentioned i wanted to get my truck in alignment and they just basically told me hey you got to replace some stuff before we can do that so like anybody else i went searching i was trying to do this inexpensively i looked at all your major local auto parts stores to see what i could find locally and what i was finding was if i wanted to do a complete front end rebuild it was going to be at least 500 plus dollars which was more than i wanted to spend for this which is really just a winter beater vehicle so i did some research i found 1a auto 1auto has a bunch of cool install videos on how to put all these items on your truck i'm going to show you i'm going to give you kind of a review of me unpackaging everything installing it and from just an installer's perspective what i think about the part so let's talk about the kit that i got how much it cost and what all it came with okay so what does the kit come with and how much does it cost well first of all this all costs 250 which is honestly under half of what i would have cost to buy it locally i ordered it online it came fast i don't think i paid for shipping it got here in like two to three days um and here's what the kit comes with so this kit that i'm showing right now comes with upper control arms um so as the bushings pressed in it has the upper ball joints installed so you've got two upper control arms you have inner and outer tie rod ends so four total you have the tie rod adjusting sleeves you have sway bar end links which is nice because one of mine is broken you have an idler arm a pitman arm an idler arm bracket and two lower ball joints all for 250 dollars [Music] i think i'm going to loosen these bolts up here a little bit and then from there i'll hit it with the pickle fork and see if i can't get it to separate i'm going to try and do all this without removing the brake caliper mostly because i'm lazy okay so when you unbox your upper control arms you're gonna see obviously they come all assembled they're gonna come with hardware i'm not exactly sure why they give you two bolts here um tbd on that one uh you're gonna have your grease fitting looks like these things are maybe partially greased but we'll hit them with some grease before we're done just want to show you you know at a glance they're not totally identical and what i mean by that is the shape of these is slightly different um but hopefully very close um you know just looking at things though looking at at this versus what came out of it i kind of think they appear to be pretty good quality um like i said nothing glaringly odd measurement um diameter on these so let's do a couple of them here 0.985 0.992 again we're just you know this isn't rocket science it's right around an inch look at the old one pretty much the same so it's not like you're getting thinner metal um with the new one which is good so so the upper control arm is in previous guy had this thing flipped around wrong and all bent out of shape so i had to hammer it back right but everything goes in no problem no issues um that little piece so i don't have it pumped full of [Music] grease yet but that little piece i was showing you earlier this little cap i think that's just for shipping you don't install that but let me show you kind of what my thought process is for the next part here i know it's going to be a little bit dark okay so don't even bother trying to use a puller on your idler arm because the idler arm and bracket come with this kit so you can remove it all as a single spot the only thing that's going to be difficult in my opinion is going to be getting the pitman arm off the steering box hopefully that doesn't fight me and then obviously your your tie rod ends you can just undo these um right here because you're going to be replacing those whole things so you all you want to do is make sure that you have the right on the right and the left and left and match that with your adjustment when you go to uh to install that so i think first things first i'm going to undo the tie rod ends pop this off see if i can pop this center link off and then with any luck get the pitman arm off if i can get the pitman arm off without having to mess with the sway bar i'll be happy i have a backup plan if it doesn't work [Music] [Music] so you couldn't see in the video but i got all of the well yeah i pretty much got all the front suspension minus the pitman arm pulled off so you already saw me replace the upper control arm but the idler arm bracket idler arm the center link is the only thing that's going to be reused we're going to clean that up the sway bar will be reused too one of my end links was broken that's why it's missing on this side and we're going to replace the bushings i'm going to clean up the parts like the center link and the sway bar and repaint them to get the pitman arm off some people tell you that it's a 32 millimeter or that it's a um you know inch and a quarter i had the best luck trying to get on it with an inch and a quarter but i couldn't it was too big i think it's either an inch and 5 16 or a 33 and an inch and 5 16 is a little bit bigger than the 33 so i got myself an inch and 5 16 crows foot and we're going to see if we can't break it loose with this on a four wheel drive truck it's very difficult to get up in there basically because there's a there's a cross member in the way that blocks your access so i think on a two-wheel drive truck it'd be pretty simple you could throw a socket on it but we're gonna try this or get yourself a big adjustable or take the steering box out but i really want to try to avoid that okay so there's your pitman arm but then right below it you've got this brace that goes in between your lower control arms so while you can get this slid you know over it right switch hands here well you can get this slid down into place you don't have but hardly literally any room okay i got it off um let me save you guys a lot of time that's the tool you want right there just like this okay part numbers oem 27016 no fancy bolts save that for something else okay the trick is undo that bolt undo that bolt that will allow your steering box to rotate and then you can jam this tool up in there and get it off and you really got to push on it and thread it and the key here's the key to why this works there's a nipple right there and there's a female indentation on that shaft so it's off of there that's how you do it guys on a four-wheel drive just like with the control arms i want to show you the idler arm bracket um the new one versus the old one so a couple little changes here this center section is fatter just visibly than the other one um which does change up some of the webbing so like this webbing seems longer but i think it's only because this part's thinner um everything else seems about the same the idler arm itself very similar design i don't see any kind of major changes in the beefiness the one thing that and this is maybe if you went with like a moog or something that's more expensive is these all come pre-greased which means they're sealed units so eventually you know if this gets torn or whatever and contaminants get in there you know something like this you grease it you come back and grease it again so by saving all that money like half a lot of this stuff is sealed whereas this one has a zerks on it same thing with the with this arm right here so it's up to you kind of what you want to do i i could see how the argument could be made that something with a grease fitting allows you to maintain it longer versus something like this that is kind of sealed and one and done that being said also ask yourself how often are you going any greasing those because i know a lot of folks in the internet will say well this is obviously better and maybe you're right but are you helping it at all if you never go and grease it so keep that in mind um again i am trying to get me something back on the road that gets my alignment to where it can be put you know in the spec to where i can drive this thing and i would prefer to have something that's less expensive that i know all the parts are new versus spending you know two two and a half times the price and then having to remember to go and grease everything whereas like i may not have it long enough that really the greasing schedule becomes you know an issue so that's why i chose this route but just something to consider if you're if this is going to be a longer time vehicle for you when you're trying to make this decision but in terms of the beefiness of the casting the parts i don't see anything that um really jumps out at me the only only thing is right here um this section is a little bit thinner but you can also see where this blew out and this is obviously the new seal so hey like i said to each their own so it's hard to say on something at this age but like i said i wanted to come and compare all the parts so let's assume that this was the original sway bar end link okay and i only say that because you don't know and the other one did break but this one's rusty you can see where it's really starting to get pretty bad down there what i want to show you is these new ones if you look here the new ones are actually i would argue beefier than what's existing um comparing the head side here i would say that these new ones are are better than what's existing which is pretty cool so you know in some cases things look like they might be a little cheaper in this case they look like they're beefier again the only thing i would say with this kit is why not include these and this if you're gonna include everything else otherwise great kayla's going and the kit doesn't come with are um replacement sway bar bushings one of the things i noticed too you can pick this up for like 30 or 40 bucks um it comes with the caps which are newly painted which are nice because ones are going to be all rusty new bushings which yours will probably be worn out and the other really nice thing is it comes with hardware um i actually ran my hardware through a die if i can find it right next to me um here are the old ones and uh they don't look terrible now but this is after me soaking me in oil and running them through a die and all this stuff so these will be a lot nicer they'll last longer hit them with some anti-seize throw them in so i decided i couldn't leave you know everything old and rusty and put it you know back together with the new parts so i decided to basically knock all the rust off the center link off of the sway bar and repaint everything and make it look all nice and new which didn't take that long so we'll do a time lapse of that just remember when you're disassembling the center link to remember which tie rod went on which side because at least in my application the driver and passenger side tie rods were not the same length so if you want the alignment to at least be as good as it was when it came out you'll want to mark those and that way you can adjust your new tie rods to the same length when you go to reinstall them just take a quick look at that time lapse and then at the end we'll go and throw everything back [Music] [Music] so it's a day later uh the parts are back from the paint shop aka my backyard i think it came out great i mean you could spend a ton of time on these and really you know dig deep and try and get below some of that pitting but um knocking all the surface rust off and uh trying to smooth it out getting some paint on it i think goes a long way what i'm gonna do is do the sway bar first and then start kind of with everything else the other thing i'm going to pay attention to is the alignment of the idler arm bracket just to make sure that everything goes back together kind of in the same orientation um and yeah so let's go ahead and get started okay if you really want to see how everything goes together i really recommend watching those 1a auto videos they do a really good job of the installation and i'm not going to bore you with you know another 15 minutes of me putting everything back on just know that pretty much everything goes back together reverse of how you took it off with one big exception and that is the way these things were set up from the factory if you have a truck that's like an old survivor and maybe it never got a line before you really need to pay attention to the way the upper control arms go in there's actually a slot on one side and a hole on the other if you want these things to truly be aligned this is especially true if you've got bigger tires or lift kit you need a knockout i'll try and post a picture you need to knock out the part that's a hole on one side to make it slotted on both sides and that allows for the eccentric washers and alignment adjusting bolts whatever you want to call them to be properly manipulated by your alignment shop to get a full alignment and we'll talk about that you know here just in a quick second and i'll post the alignment specs to to kind of wrap this all up okay so while i'm talking take a look at the alignment you can see here how it came in how it left you'd see caster camber toe everything basically the alignment shop was able to get it within spec me not knowing this when i put it together i didn't knock those slots out so what that means is they were somewhat limited on how they could adjust caster and camber so it is within spec but if i would have known this now i'm giving you that advice if i would have known this i would have knocked those little spots out i'll post the picture twice so you can see it and this would allow the alignment shop to totally die in dial it in completely and just be that much better but the big takeaway from this is i'm really happy with the parts everything installed as it was prescribed i didn't have to modify anything that's huge um and and it all worked and i got the alignment shop and so far i've been driving it and it's been great so um i totally recommend this kit for 250 bucks the only other thing i would say is go ahead and buy your sway bar bushings i don't know why it doesn't come with that i never installed the lower ball joints just because mine were pretty new um but yeah it's been great so far so hopefully you guys like this video like i said i highly recommend the kit i'll try and post the part number so you have it and uh yeah enjoy the rest of your thanksgiving if you're watching this on thanksgiving and come check us out next time on truck and roll take it easy

Channel: TruckandRoll

Views: 83,997

Keywords: obs chevy, obs chevy handling, obs chevy rebuild, truck suspension overhaul, gmt400 chevy, gmt400 chevy handling, gmt400 chevy rebuild, gmt400 suspension, how to fix your chevy's handling, chevy 4x4 handling fix, chevy 4wd front end rebuild, obs front end rebuilt, obs pitman arm replacement, obs chevy alignment, obs chevy gmt400, chevy pitman arm removal, chevy idler arm replacement, chevy tie rod end replacement, obs chevy home alignment

Id: nmSAOYQGjmI

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 25 2021