I changed out the
Sway Bar End Links and the
Sway Bar Bushings on my 2002 Explorer yesterday. I thought I'd share my findings and include some pictures I took along the way.
I decided to use jack up both sides of the vehicle and take off the wheels for easier access to the bushings and end links. Even though it seems to be more work to take this step it sure makes it easier in the long run by avoiding having to crawl under the vehicle and contort your arms and hands. I placed the jack stands under the frame "diamonds" as is the typical jacking location for the vehicle.
With the wheels off we can see we have easy access to the bushing and end links. Note the orange brake caliper to the lower-left in the photo.
I changed the sway bar bushing first. I did one side at a time to prevent the sway bar from drooping down if both were removed at the same time. Note the distance between the blue arrows...I want to comment about this after the new bushing is installed.
As my vehicle is not a northern winter snow-salt vehicle the sway bar didn't have any rust. I used brake cleaner to clean up the WD-40 reside I used to squirt on the old bushings.
Even though this bushing set comes with grease zerks I coated the new bushing with lithium grease prior to installation. Take a look at the blue arrows in this photo and note the thickness of this bushing set as compared to the prior photo of the original bushings. The old rubber bushings are are massive compared to the new polyurethane bushings. I'm not sure why this is but I'll speculate that since rubber is much more giving than polyurethane they needed to have much greater thickness. I didn't measure the thickness of the two but it would appear that the new polyurethane bushings are 3/16" thinner. Essentially, this means the sway bar installed with the new bushings sits 3/16" closer to the frame.
I put Locktite-blue on the bushing bolts but I didn't crank the bushing bolts all the way down at this point. The bolts were in most of the way but I wanted to get the new end links installed before torquing the bolts. The old end links came out fairly easily. Again, I didn't have rust. I removed both the driver's side and passenger side end links at the same time. This allows the sway bar to rotate a little bit to allow for easy removal of the old end link bolts as well as installation of the new end link bolts.
I assembled MOST of the passenger side end link components and put them in first. Note in the picture I left the top bushing out and put the nut on to hold the assembly loosely in place while I went to install the driver's side end link. Doing it this way gives you enough sway bar play to get the end link bolt and components installed for the driver's side.
With the driver's side components all in place I proceeded to the passenger side to put in that top bushing I had left out that gave us sway bar play for the driver's side. With all components in place I torqued the sway bar bushing bolts to 52 ft-lbs. Then I torqued the nuts on both the left and right side end links.
The directions that came with the new sway bar end links specify that the nut should be torqued down until the bushings start to expand. Then you are to back off by 1/4 turn. I don't think my eyesight is good enough to distinguish that exact point where the bushing start to expand so instead of following the manufacturer's directions I just torqued the nuts to 18 ft-lbs. They seemed to have reasonable compression without any noticeable expansion. I put a dab of Loctite-blue on the nuts to lock them in place. I should point out that I torqued all the bolts with the vehicle sitting on the jack stands. I don't know if it makes a difference or not if they are torqued up in the air or with the weight of the vehicle as it sits on the ground. I will await comments from y'all.
The old set of bushing and end links.