Help with upper control arms

90xr7reborn

Registered User
Does anyone have any tricks to changing upper control arms? My car is due for inspection and i was changing the tierods and found that the upper joint was shot on both sides and also the torsion bar bushings. My manual says that the whole upper needs to be changed. What a pain in the neck. Any help would be appreciative. Thanks...Bill
 
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I think the drivers side is pretty easy to access, but the passenger side gets tough with all of the A/C lines in the way. other than that you will have little to no problems.
 
I believe a 15mm stubby wrench or one of those racheting wrenches will help with that rear passenger side nut.
 
For the rear passenger side nut, I used a long wrench (I think it was 18, could have been 15) to hold the nut in place, and then applied brute force to the bolt to turn it. There is a little tab on the bolt that you need to remove first. There wasn't enough room to turn the nut as you would usually do.

When you get the replacement arms, they will probably not look the same - they look lighter and less sturdy. This is normal, as the heavier SC control arms were discontinued and replaced with the standard T-bird part.
 
On the passenger side, the easiest way to get to the rear nut is from underneath the car. You just let a wrench hang onto it, then loosen the bolt up from the outside.

Hope this helps.
 
I finished up my control arms, both sides, today. It took me about 4 hrs. I said to hell with it and pulled the a/c plumbing out. it needed to be recharged anyway. I didn't notice a difference in the uppers when i changed them.the ones i got were out of a 94 bird. 30 bucks a piece, i didn't think that was too bad.well thanks for the help...Bill
 
For the upper control arms on the front, you can leave the wheels on. When you loosen the top bolt you can then use a long bar resting on top of the wheel for leverage to pry the arm loose.
(Car resting on frame on jackstands.)
 
the little meatl peace that keeps one end of the bolt from moving pop it off. that will make u life taking that off a lot better. i know i did that i replaced all that in feb
spent 1500 on the front alone
 
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