Tackling Suspension R&R and brakes tomorrow

[ROBinGa]

Hey guys I would like some feedback. I have a 2003 Explorer XLT with 4.6 and 4x4. The upper control arm ball joint on drivers side is cracked and making squeaks. Also the sway bar link is very loose on that side. The front brakes are grinding and rotors have grooves. This is wife's daily driver and I was told her car makes funny noise and found these problems when I went out to look at it. So it's been parked this week while I waited on parts to come and my son and I are going to tackle these things in the morning. So I ordered - new complete UCAs for both sides, new rotors and pads both front and rear, sway bar end links for both sides in front. Struts for all corners are coming but not here yet and I need to get brakes back on so she can drive Monday, so those will be done in a couple weekends from now.

Here is the order in which I plan to do this tomorrow:

1. Loosen front tire lug nuts on front enough to be able to get off once raised
2 Jack it up and put jack stands under front cross member
3. Follow steps on some posts here to replace Upper Control Arm on driver side
4. Replace sway bar end link
5. Raise suspension parts to ride level and torque the UCA and sway link nuts
6. Remove caliper, bracket, and old rotor then clean all surfaces, and grease caliper slides and contact points for pads with brake clips
7. Install new rotor
8. Replace bracket and caliper and new pads
9. Repeat this for passenger side. Put front tires back on and lower front end
10. Loosen rear lugs, jack the rear end and put jack stands under frame in front of rear wheels
11. Remove rear brake caliper and rotor, clean surfaces, then install rotor and rear pads, then repeat on other side
12. Bleed the brake fluid in lines starting at rear passenger side, move to rear driver side and bleed that one, then put tires back on , lower and torque rear lug nuts.
13. Raise front end again and bleed the front brake lines starting on passenger and ending with driver brake line. I plan to purge all the brake fluid following a YouTube video on ChrisFix site. I have 32 oz of brake fluid just bought today to purge it all while bleeding lines.
14. Then I will prep the brakes in my drive before testing them in my neighborhood streets. The pads I bought are ceramic and it advises to burnish the pads with 20 stops from 30 mph with 30 second between the stops process.

After all this I hope the Explorer will at least be back operable and safe brakes. When the struts come I will replace those then take for tire rotation and alignment. Does my plan for tomorrow seem the correct order and reasonable? Would love the feedback. Thanks!

 

[03Explo20]

I wouldn't count on getting all this done in one day unless you're extremely lucky!

Count on the UCA bolts to give you a very rough time, especially if you live in a snow area. I changed both of my UCA's this past week and it took me 8.5 hours just to get them loosened and the new ones installed! The rust on the bolt threads make doing this a living hell! I rounded off one nut and had to actually Dremel cut it off. It was not pretty!

There isn't a whole lot of room to work on those back nuts so be prepared. I had an older, long handle, torque wrench that I was able to wedge back in the spaces. I was able to do a quarter turn on the nuts each time. Your arms will get tired fast!

Good luck to you!

 

[ROBinGa]

I live in Ga so no rust and I gave everything a look see this afternoon and washed the wheel wells and suspension components today to have it all grease and dirt free for tomorrow. The nuts and threads all look really good. Thanks for the well wishes

 

[lincolnshibuya]

it's better to cut the end links than trying to loosen the bolts, they become rusted inside the plastic. this will save you a lot of time.
hopefully the rotors are not so rusted that it will be easy for you to pull out.
borrow a pittman arm puller to remove the ball joint easily from the splndle.

i've been always wrong in my estimate when working with this truck, sometimes a 30 min job takes the whole afternoon because of the above issues.

 

[ROBinGa]

It was a complete disaster. The passenger side UCA , sway bar end link , and rotor and pads went on with no problems and I would say took us only about an hour and half. It went together easily and I thought we would be bleeding brakes in no time. Then we got to driver side UCA. The nut holding UCA to knuckle was coming off ok using my socket with pipe for leverage when snap it broke about 2 threads under where it comes out of knuckle. I could not beat it up with 3 lb hammer. Friends came over and we all tried. Decided to cut the ball joint above the knuckle to get UCA out of there. Used hacksaw and it cut through easily. But try as we might we could not get the broken ball joint bolt out of the knuckle. Tried heat, tried heavier hammer. Cut sides with grinder to make it square and tried to wrench it off. No luck it wasn't budging. We even tried to drill it out. We got up to a 1/4 bit so there is a hole through the bolt material but we gave up after several hours. I am just going to buy a knuckle and chalk it up as wasnt meant to be. My buddy tried to console me by saying a shop would have encountered same thing and cost me a ton. It's almost like that ball joint bolt was fused to the knuckle hole. Anyone had that happen and if so we're you able to get the knuckle hole opened up?

 

[ROBinGa]

Decided to go ahead and ordered a new knuckle from Rock Auto.

 

[pet575]

Had it happen to me. Took 2 days of pressure w a Pittman arm puller to push it out. After all that time of pressure I still had to use heat and a BFH as well.

 

[ROBinGa]

Update ... So the driver side upper control arm ball joint would not come out of the knuckle. It's like the metal of the ball joint threaded shaft fused with the knuckle completely and metals became one. I ordered a new Motorcraft knuckle and while it was off got a new hub as well. The passenger side swap went perfectly. Now I have encountered a problem with strut bolt securing it to lower control arm. It's been tough but now the explorer will basically have all new front suspension parts.