Gen 2 Montero Front end refresh

[00:00:00]Welcome back everybody. In today's video, we're going to be doing a full front end refresh on this 1995 Mitsubishi Monto SR. Let me show you what we're working with. So, when I say front end refresh, I want to talk about the parts that we're going to be replacing. So, there's a few different things that we're going to be replacing as far as the steering and the suspension on the front end of this Gen 2. And the reason this is important is because almost every single Gen 2 is going to need this done at some point.

[00:00:23]They're all over 30 years old here in the United States. So, it's a good idea to check these and replace them if you can. So right here we have your usual tie rods. So we got the inner tie rod over here and the outer tie rod over here. And you can see this boot is totally shot. So there's probably going to be play in that tie rod. I can see some up there. And either way, if it doesn't have play now, it's going to get crap in it and it's going to erode that ball joint. And then right here you have your pitman arm. This is what comes directly off the steering box. And this is a source of a lot of play. If you've got a lot of play in your steering wheel in your Gen Two, it's probably your pitman arm or it's your idler arm.

[00:00:55]Before we go over and show you the idle arm, this is the other thing. This is the sway bar end link. And these can click or make some pretty terrible sounds when they start to go out, and they are almost certainly worn. The last thing we're going to do is ball joints.

[00:01:07]We're going to do the top ball joint and the bottom ball joint. I'm going to show you guys how to get those out. That's a little more work, but it's well worth doing. Like I said, if these never have been changed, they've been in there for 30 years, and they can cause slop in the way that your wheel is centered. It can cause bad alignment, and worst case scenario, if it fails, you can actually pull the wheel underneath the vehicle, which is no good. Like I mentioned on the driver's side, this is your idler arm. And if I had to say anything is the weak link of this entire system, it's going to be this one. And you can tell right here, this has already been replaced by somebody. And this is not the OEM design. The OEM design is a cast piece, and it's a lot stronger. We're going to be replacing this with an aftermarket one, but an aftermarket one that is OE quality. So, that's really good to get taken care of. That thing fails all the time. if they fail, and they do on the trail. Your tires can actually go opposite directions or you'll have a really hard time steering, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to get off the trail. So, let's talk about what we are replacing this with. Now, all of these parts are by 555 and they are all available at lusoverland.com. I love that he has everything you could possibly need for redoing the front end of this suspension, and that's who supplied these parts. So, we've got both our tie rods, our inner and our outer. The only thing that we reuse is the sleeve that they both go into. We've got the lower ball joints and the upper ball joints, both stabilizer end links. These are going to be your sway bar end links, the pitman arm on the driver's side, and the idler arm. So, I'm going to get these all opened up. We're going to lay them out, and then I'll show you how we're going to install them.

[00:02:32]All right, here's all the parts unboxed, and I want to talk about the quality of these because I've been running these parts on my personal rigs for a long time. So, like I mentioned with the idler arm, you can see this is actually a cast body instead of the kind kind of stamp steel one that's really loose and it's not going to hold up to off-roading. So, I've been running these in my Monteros for the last like 2 or 3 years. The OEM ones, they're nice, but they are just as good of quality and they're a little bit cheaper. Here's that idler arm. Again, the same kind of quality. You got your tie rods. But here's something I also like is the bolts that you need to put in the lower ball joints and the upper ball joints.

[00:03:06]These guys send you new ones, and that's huge because as those bolts fatigue from getting tightened and worn out, if these snap, it doesn't matter if you have a new ball joint in it, you really got to have the hardware to go with it. So, they include everything you need. You can see you got grease, all that. So, I think this is a really nice kit cuz if you're going to put in all of this work, it might as well put in quality parts.

[00:03:24]But enough about this stuff. Let's jump over to the driver's side. Let's start tearing it apart and I'll show you guys how to replace all of this. Okay, before we get too much further into this build and replacing all these parts, I want to address a few things. And the first one is that when I say I'm doing a total front end refresh, that's not entirely true. As you'll see in this video, there are a lot of components that I could change while I'm in there. The primary thing for me is I'm changing everything that has a ball joint. So, what I'm talking about there is there's a cup and a ball, and those are the things that erode over time. They've got boots on them. So, that's the tie rods, the pitman arm, the idler arm. All of those have ball joints, including the upper and the lower ball joint and the sway bar end links. So, that's what I'm going to be replacing. That leaves a lot of things like the steering box, the CV axles, the brakes, things like the upper and lower control arm bushings, even the torsion bar bushings. There's so many things that could be replaced while you're in there. Which brings me to another thing I want to address. One of the things with these Gen two Monteros is you can get into something called scope creep. And if you're not familiar with that, what it means is the amount of work you're planning on doing can quickly grow as you do things like think, well, I'm in there. Maybe I'll do this. And while I fully understand that something that could take maybe a day or an afternoon or even a weekend can turn into a month-long or multimonthlong project, and sometimes that's too intimidating. Either it's cost prohibitive or just the idea of having a rig down for that long makes it hard to get it going. And then it makes it hard to finish the project if you get stuck.

[00:04:49]So, it's probably better to note that there's some things that I should have fixed. I should have done the CV axles.

[00:04:54]The steering box definitely could be replaced while I'm in there, but it's just one of those things. You do what you can with what you have, and if you have to tackle it over a couple weekends and you have to do the job a couple more times, all that means is you're just going to get better at doing it, and the bolts are going to be fresh, so it's still worth doing. The other thing I want to address is that these parts I refer to as 555. They're technically Sani 555 parts. In the video, I'm just going to call them 555 parts, but that's the technical branding name. So, I just wanted to clear that up before you hear the rest of this. Okay, so there's a lot of things that have to come off to do this job. And one of the nice things about it is because you're already in here, there's a lot of things that are made easier. One more thing I will point out that you could do if you wanted to would be replace these bushings.

[00:05:34]Specifically, these upper control arm bushings. You'll already have a lot of this loose. It might be worth doing. The lower control arm bushings are a lot more work. But in this case, we're just going to do the ball joints. They're the ones that have slop and play and the boots are busted. And we're going to do the tie rods cuz of the same thing. So, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to pull this brake caliper off.

[00:05:51]We're going to get that hung out of the way. And then I'm going to get this hub removed by taking the lower and upper ball joint nuts off. Okay, we got the caliper hung up, caliper bracket and pads out of the way. This is also a good time to do your brake pads um and possibly your rotor if you want to take that apart. I have another video on that if you're interested in what it takes to do that. I just did these brakes on this car, so I'm not worried about it, but they have to come off anyways. Okay, the next thing I do is try to remove this ABS sensor. There's two ways to do this if it's stuck here, but this is the easier way. So, this is a Chowwell's mimeter back here. Um, it's possible that some Gen 2 models don't have ABS.

[00:06:24]I'm not 100% sure. I know that this one does. So, I'm going to pull this out.

[00:06:29]And the idea here is to very safely remove this sensor because I have to pull this whole hub off in order to get this lower ball joint out. So, with the bolt out of the way, I'm just going to try to wiggle this back and forth. You got to be really careful with the sensor. You don't want to be too violent with it. If it's going to come out, it'll come out. And if not, you're going to have to do it the other way. This one, unfortunately, feels like it's pretty stuck.

[00:06:51]These have seen a lot of corrosion. So, yeah. Okay, that's not going to come out. So, instead, I'm going to move up here and I'm going to take the bracket off of the upper control arm. And there's plenty of slack so that when I go to hang this out of the way, it's not going to pull on it and break that sensor cuz that's a bad time. Okay, so I got all three of those bolts and I did actually end up breaking one in half, which is really common because of all the corrosion that's gets in here. Um, but you can see there's tons of slack here. So, I just have to remember when I take this off, it's going to want to fall and I need to hang it up either with a zip tie or some kind of bailing wire to keep it out of the way cuz I need to access things. But, this is going to be really heavy and I don't want it to be hanging on this sensor, otherwise it is going to break it. So, the next thing I got to do is I got to pop off this tie rod right here, the lower ball joint nut down here, and the upper ball joint nut. And then I've got to get access to this to pull the snout of the CV out. There's going to be a circlipip under there. So, actually, let me dump under this dust cover and I'll show you what I'm talking about. Okay, so here's that circlip I'm talking about right on the snout of the CV axle. And I'm just using some of these circlip pliers. And in my experience, no matter what you do, no matter what tool you have, these just kind of suck to pull off. So you just want to get it up on its edge. Pull it off like that. And now this has freed up the end of this CV so that when I pull this whole thing down, I can leave the CV axle in place and pull all that away. Got the tie rod end nut taken off. And that's just a 19. And now I'm going to bust it off. And here's the deal. I know for a fact that I have the right part for this. So, I'm comfortable just hitting it right here on the top. If you're not 100% sure that you have the right part, I would recommend striking here to loosen it up.

[00:08:25]But, I know that I have the right part.

[00:08:26]I know I'm going to replace it. So, I'm not going to worry about that. I'm just going to knock this out so that we can get it replaced.

[00:08:33]Done. Okay. Now, we're going to take this lower ball joint off. That's going to be a 24.

[00:08:40]Just zip that guy right off. One of the things I like to do is h take this off first because it allows me to swivel this back and forth without having to worry about the steering lock. Makes it a little little easier to access that.

[00:08:51]Then we're going to get up here and take this guy off. I think this is a 22. It is a 22. I got to get that circlip out though. I think Oh, I might be able to break it.

[00:09:01]Let's try. It's not a circlip. It's a uh what do you call that? Piece of wire.

[00:09:07]Oh, someone is yelling it at me right now.

[00:09:10]What could that possibly be called?

[00:09:13]Cotter pin. It's called a cotter pin.

[00:09:15]And I'm going to destroy the cotter pin or I'm going to try to at least because I don't want to take it out. Oh yeah, we destroyed the cotter pin. Again, not recommended if you plan on reusing this part. But we have the right part. I'm not worried about it. This is in fact a 22.

[00:09:35]There we go. Okay. Once again, we know that we have the right part for this.

[00:09:39]So, I'm okay using a pickle fork here to separate this. Uh, you're going to destroy the boot when you do this. So, um, if you're planning on reusing it for any reason, obviously, don't do this.

[00:09:48]But, I'm going to wedge a pickle fork in here with my sledgehammer and just go until it pops. I'm going to do the upper one first, and then I'm going to show you how to get the lower one out.

[00:09:57]>> Wa!

[00:09:57]>> Yep.

[00:09:58]>> That was exciting.

[00:09:59]>> Very violent.

[00:10:00]>> Very exciting. Okay, so the upper is separated. Now, it's time to pull the lower off. And it's worth noting as soon as this lower breaks, this whole hub assembly, including the brake rotor and the knuckle is going to come off. It's very heavy. And uh with this ABS line, I want to make sure it doesn't kind of fall down and snap it. So, I do have a bungee cord here. It's mostly a backup plan. I'm going to hold this up here, and I'm going to tap right there to try to shock that. I might even tap on the ball joint cuz again, we're replacing it. But ultimately, you got to separate it. You could try to get a pickle fork in there. I'm going to try to hit it first, and then we'll resort to the pickle fork if we have to.

[00:10:35]There it is.

[00:10:37]Okay. So, I got that. And this is how it's going to come out. Right there is you're going to have to slide it down the CV shaft. Slide it off the end of that right here. Now, you've got this thing out of the way. Right now, I'm actually just going to hang it right there on the tie rod. Very convenient.

[00:10:54]Don't forget this guy right here. If this falls off the end, it's worth noting the grooved side goes out. So, the groove side goes towards the wheel bearing. The flat side goes towards the CV axle. But now that we got that out, we can pop out the upper ball joint and the lower ball joint, get those replaced, and then work our way backwards as we reassemble it. Okay, these are actually different size bolts than the factory, so I know these have been replaced before. Uh, they are grade 10.9, which is a great grade. Um, however, I know that they're different.

[00:11:21]So, I'm using an 18 mm. Your results may vary. Uh, I'm going to get these four bolts pulled off. And then if you come over here, there's actually another one.

[00:11:28]And this one's really strange to me. You can only take that out after you've loosened all of these up. I think it's a safety thing. And that's going to be a 10 mm. It's hard to get out. And you like you, like I said, you can see you can't get a socket in there right now.

[00:11:40]So, I'm going to drop all of these.

[00:11:41]Then, I'm going to take that out. Then, the lower ball joint should slide right out of that lower control arm.

[00:12:01]Boom. Take that safety screw out. And then you drop it down just like that. So it comes from the bottom here. You just have to wiggle it around so you can get it to drop out. Now let's focus on the top one, which also has aftermarket bolts, which I these I don't love.

[00:12:29]Okay, get those out. One thing you'll notice right here, these are bolt-in ball joints, but this boot right here has to be installed afterwards. So, you can't actually pull it through the arm.

[00:12:39]The other ones that we're installing have uh have a spring that comes along with it that you can put on later, which is really slick. So, for this one, just going to pull that guy off.

[00:12:50]Pull that right through. And there is the old upper ball joint removed. Okay.

[00:12:55]One of the only downsides about using these 555 parts is they don't coat them from the factory. So, if you just throw them on your vehicle, if you live in anywhere that gets any kind of weather, they're going to rust. Now, it's just surface rust, so it's not too bad, but it's just one of the things I've noticed over the years of using this, specifically their pitman arms, is they show rust after the first winter. So, the solution is to just cover them with a little bit of spray paint. I'm choosing to just hit them with clear gloss. It'll keep them looking the way they are. I'm just going to paint over the boots. I'm not super worried about anything like that. It's just to keep that rust off and then they'll be ready to go.

[00:13:35]Just going to Yep, that worked just fine. Great. Good time.

[00:13:41]Okay, so we're moving on to taking off the pitman arm. This is going to be a pretty simple process. You got a 19 right here. The hardest part about it is getting it separated up here. So, uh, that's a pretty big socket. I'm going to try to move as much out of the way as I can. While you're in here, it's nice cuz you can have something like the hub out of the way, the brake caliper out of the way. It makes it a little easier to access these parts. So, I'm going to pull this apart. And then I work on getting the sway bar out of the way so I can hopefully make it onto that nut. And then I'm going to use a pitman arm puller to pull that. I'm just going to use a regular pickle fork to separate this boot since again, not reusing it.

[00:14:14]And then I'm also going to do that on the tie rod.

[00:14:26]YOU REALLY DON'T HAVE TO film all of this.

[00:14:32]All right, got that one separated. Now we'll work on the tie rod.

[00:14:45]Fail.

[00:14:47]There's the tie rod out. You can see that boot is completely destroyed. But again, it was already leaking. Now we have full access to the pitman arc. So, this is a good thing to check for as well. If you got slop in your steering wheel, you can see there's a little bit of slop in the steering box. You can see I'm moving this up here, but nothing is moving down there. So, nothing I do here will fix that. You'll have to get a different steering box. There's a way to adjust it. I can't say I've seen great results with it, so I wouldn't really bother. There's a couple companies making rebuilt ones. From what I've heard, they're getting good results.

[00:15:16]I've only used a used one out of a different Monontto, but there's only one way to get rid of that, and that's to change this stuff up.

[00:15:25]Okay, there's that nut popped off. And I'm actually going to go to the other side and pop it off, too. That way, there's a little more room in the sway bar.

[00:15:37]Okay, got that one wedged off.

[00:15:41]Okay, so now I've got a pry binder here.

[00:15:43]And uh these are actually moving, which is great cuz sometimes they don't like to. Sometimes they're really stubborn and they're seized on there. Um so just pry that off. Might require a little bit of violence. You can see there it's sprung up. Now the other side.

[00:16:00]Oh yeah. Look at that. So these are torn. You can see they're obviously bad, but it just slid off of there. That is so nice. That never happens to me.

[00:16:11]However, your sway bar bushings are stubborn. Okay, I ended up pulling the sway bar all the way off because it's way easier to get at these and these can be really stubborn. So, got those zipped off. Use a special pair of vice grips here to hold on to it. It's really nice.

[00:16:24]And it's worth noting it would be a really good time to replace these. We forgot to get these. So, you can see these are in really bad condition, but I'm going to throw them back in. One of the things that's nice is they're the easiest thing to replace. They're right on the front of the vehicle. So, these will be easy to replace once I get them from Lusso, but I didn't get them for this time. So, I'm going to get the uh sway bar end links put back on the bar.

[00:16:44]We'll put this in later, but at least then we'll have that part done. So, the last thing we got to do to take all the stuff off on this side is take off this pitman arm bolt where it bolts onto the steering box is a 32 mm.

[00:16:59]That's usually on there pretty tight.

[00:17:01]You have a lock washer on there. And then I'm going to need a pitman arm puller. Um I suppose if you're out in the middle of nowhere and you really need to get this off, you could use a hammer. I don't like to put that kind of torque on the steering box. Um, so I'm going to get my pitman arm puller and whiz this off and then we'll be ready for reassembly. Okay, so when I'm pulling this off, uh, it's important to note the orientation. Now, here's what I like about using these 555 parts is you can see right here there is a dash mark that goes all the way across and that corresponds to this bolt on the end of this shaft. So, you can barely see it probably, but I can see it pretty clearly. There's one right here and that's indexed right in there. And you can see that this is lined up with it.

[00:17:40]So when I put this one, the new one in, I'm going to line those up. And what that does is is it allows the steering wheel to stay centered. Otherwise, it's going to be all sorts of off. Your steering wheel is going to be in a weird spot, and you're going to have more steering to the left or the right than the other side. So that's another thing about using nice parts is you don't have to do all the guess work with that. So I'm going to get this ripped off.

[00:18:04]Doesn't it feel like that's just going to explode, John?

[00:18:08]Yeah, it looks like it's >> I hate everything about this.

[00:18:20]Try not to let your car on fire here.

[00:18:25]That doesn't want to come off at all.

[00:18:37]Is that going anywhere?

[00:19:04]All right, we had the results of violence there. Um, which I never love doing cuz it's not the right way to do it. Um, but sometimes you're in a tough spot. Realistically, I could have kept heating that and soaking it and heating and soaking it. But this was actually a pretty good solution. So, you can see right here, I use an angle grinder and I just barely caught these threads right here. It's not going to affect it. It's going to clamp on just fine, but it was just on there way too tight. So, I ended up splitting it in half. It's going to be okay. This is not something I'm really worried about. There's plenty of thread engagement, so the steering is not going to be sloppy. Just really careful with it. Like I said, this is not the right way to do things, but this is the way we're going to do things right now. Another good thing you can do is just replace this whole steering box and use a new arm. But either way, now we got it off, and now it's time to put the new one on.

[00:19:53]Okay. So, I'm going to push that guy out of the way.

[00:19:57]>> Make sure it's all nice and lined up.

[00:19:59]And it is.

[00:20:01]In this case, I'm just going to tap this on lightly with a hammer.

[00:20:05]Sort of get it seated. Be careful of those threads.

[00:20:09]And then I'm going to take a big socket and I'm going to pound this on evenly. I want TO GET IT AS HIGH UP AS I can before I put that nut on.

[00:20:30]Okay, now I'm going to get this thing torqued down.

[00:20:34]>> And I'm pretty sure the torque spec is 125 ft-lbs.

[00:20:38]That's what I'm going to tighten it to.

[00:20:39]I could be wrong on that. You can see right here, it's a little bit different.

[00:20:41]And so that's something to keep in mind.

[00:20:43]I think it's just the difference in the size of this casting. But either way, that's looking nice and flush. Got that tightened down. Now I'm going to put the nut on this and then we'll move on to reassembling the tie rod. Come on now.

[00:20:54]Don't be difficult.

[00:20:56]Using way too big of a hammer for this.

[00:20:59]Needs to go a little further. Okay, I've moved on to the tie rod ends here. And uh you do have to separate both of these. And then there's a center part that acts as the adjuster to go in and out. Now the reality is with doing this much work, you're absolutely going to need an alignment. So I'm going to try to get it close, but I'm knowing that no matter what I do, the steering wheel is going to be really weird. the wheels are going to be pointing in different directions. I'll need to get it aligned as soon as possible. So, in this case, what I've done is I've taken both of the tie rod ends and I've lined them up right here. And I've tried to measure the distance from basically the center of this ball right in the bottom here to where it's actually matching up. So, I want to move this nut in and out so that this distance is roughly the same to the adjuster. And then I'm going to come over here and do the same thing. Now, because these are OEM and these are not, it's it's going to be a little bit different, but I want to get as close as I can. So, now that I've done that, I've broken these loose, it's a little bit of a pain, but you just got to do it. And they actually rotate the same direction.

[00:21:56]So, these come off the same way. You can see here, one's meant to go in reverse, and when you put it on, it'll be the same kind of thing.

[00:22:04]I just have a 22, and I believe these nuts are a 24, but I just have the any size bolt stripper on here.

[00:22:13]and rotate these out. Get this center section, put it right back in the way it is, get it cinched down, and then throw it in.

[00:22:21]Okay, so I got this all tightened down.

[00:22:22]The last thing I'm going to do before I throw this in is remove this bolt right here. And instead, I'm going to put a grease fitting in there. This is the supplied grease fitting. You can see these are already greased. I'm still probably going to go over them once um before I call it a day. Um but I'll do that when it's in the car. And when you're tightening these down, you want to be really gentle. Just just snug is all you need. If you do anything more, you'll strip it out and then it'll have a hole in it and that's just never going to work. So, I'll pull this one out, too. Put a greaseert in that. I'll have to chuck it in there. Get it tightened down. Put a cotter pin through it. We're on to the ball joints. If you get confused about which side goes on which side, the shorter one goes on the outside and the longer one goes on the inside. Okay, now it's time to throw in the ball joint. I'm going to put the bolts in from the top. Torque those down. And then we'll put the upper ball joint in the same way. All right. Lower ball joint is in. upper ball joints going in. And like I mentioned before, it just comes without the boot. So, you drop it in from the top here. And then you're going to take these bolts. Love that they provide these bolts. Put them up there. Then you got your nuts and your lock washer right here and put these guys on the bottom. And then I'll be installing the boot now that it's in place. Now, these do ship dry because there's no boot on them. So, you definitely need to grease these. But I think it's good a good practice to grease everything before you call it a day. Here's that boot going on. And there is this guy right here. This is kind of like a spring and all the ball joints have it. Um, but this one you just get to see it a little bit disassembled. So, I've got it tucked underneath the boot there. And then I'm going to use a pick and I'm going to just pull that over.

[00:23:56]Okay, new strategy. I have taken off the spring and I'm just doing it with a pick. You got to be super careful not to puncture the boot. That would obviously be counterproductive.

[00:24:08]So, it might be better to do this with a flathead screwdriver if you're nervous about it, but you just want to work your way in there. Get it pulled over that edge.

[00:24:17]And then you'll slide the spring over the top of it later to seal it. Right there. Go.

[00:24:24]Get this guy.

[00:24:27]Slide it up and over. And make sure it fits in this groove. It should be real nice and tight. And there you go. So, that's ready to tighten down. grease it up. And then we're ready to put the CV in and put the hub back on. And that's a little bit of a dance, but I'll show you guys how I do it to get it on the easiest way possible. So, now we're ready to put the knuckle on. And I already sl the CV in. And uh you got we're not going to do this boot because I don't have the part for it. This is what I'm talking about with scope creep.

[00:24:51]It's so easy to uh let this kind of spiral, but this is something where it's like I obviously should be replacing this. It kills me to put it back in. I might even just wrap it in a plastic bag. But this is what we're working with. This is what we got right now.

[00:25:02]There's no point in having this sit in the shop for weeks as I wait for that to come. So, uh, I'm going to start by trimming this off. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to slide the CV axle through and then I'm going to keep it really low and try to slide the lower ball joint on first. They've got to kind of go on at the same time. So, it's a little bit of a dance and this is very heavy. Remember, you don't want to drop it. It's attached by that ABS sensor.

[00:25:25]Last thing to keep track of in the mess that is putting on this knuckle is this little washer we took off earlier.

[00:25:30]Remember, oh, the smooth side goes towards the CV and the groove side goes towards the wheelbarrow.

[00:25:39]There you go. Slide that on.

[00:25:42]You see right there?

[00:25:45]Got it on the ball joint. You got to rotate it so that it'll go through the CV axle. But even right now, I can thread that nut on there. And now I'm good to go.

[00:26:06]There we go. Okay. So, you got to line up the splines with the end of the CV shaft. Now, I wait to put this on because what I don't want to do is have this fall forward and it actually pull this CV shaft out. So, I want to kind of keep it like this. And the next step is a tough one. You've got to get the upper ball joint into this knuckle. If you've seen some of my other videos of changing CV axles and stuff, you've seen me do this before. involves lifting this and pulling this down so you can just get enough threads on this. Very worst case scenario, you're actually going to have to adjust the torsion bar to produce a little less lift and then you'll be able to put it on. So, I'm going to get to tackling that and hopefully we can get this whole thing reattached. Okay, so I am going to have to take some of the pressure out of these torsion bars. It's just realistically the safest way to do it, especially because these are cranked up to fit bigger tires. So, what I've done here is I've loosened the top nut and then I've got the jam nut exposed and I'm just going to crank these all the way down. The way to make sure your lift specs are about the same as where they were is either you can take a measurement on the fenders before you take the whole thing apart and then you'll know where it needs to be at the end and you can adjust it there or I went ahead and I wrote down the amount of threads exposed. So, I've got two and a/4 in on this side and two on this side. I'm going to wind them all the way down so there's the least amount of pressure on the control arms. and then I'm going to see if I can get those ball joints attached. Okay, so even though I hate doing it, taking the tension out of the torsion bar is the right way to do this. It just makes it so much easier and so much safer. So, I was able to get the knuckle up there. You can see the snout of the CV axle sticking out here.

[00:27:36]And now I can get rid of this. I am going to have to crank that back up when I'm done. But the last step over here is going to be attaching the tie rod. So, that's the last part of the new stuff that we put on here. And I left this tie rod loose right here. So, I am going to have to tighten that up as well. So, I'm going to tighten that down. Tighten down those jam nuts. Tighten this up. This guy's going to go right back where it was. I'm going to zip tie this around the frame since I broke that bolt. And then it's really simple. Just put on the caliper bracket and the caliper. And we're done on this side. One thing I will mention is make sure everything is tight, everything is a cotter pin, and everything is greased. Personally, I like to do it when I'm done on this side. If you're more of the person of getting that tool out once, you can do it when you're done with both sides. But I figure while you're here, just knock that out. Then it's on to the other side, which is almost exactly the same with the exception of the idler arm. So, I'm going to get this wrapped up and then we'll talk about the idle ram. All right, so the other side is all wrapped up and now we're on to the idler arm, which like I said is the only difference really between the two as far as the process goes. I think this is easier than taking off the pitman arm, especially if you have to cut it off.

[00:28:38]So, there's uh four 14 mm bolts here, and they're not captured, so you have to get a wrench and come around the back.

[00:28:44]It's going to be almost impossible for me to show you on video what that looks like. So, you just feel around here.

[00:28:50]They're different. Um, they're in different spots, but then once you get it on the back, you just zip that bolt off. And I'll give you a hint that'll make it a little bit easier if you can try to keep these pushed out. Don't take them out. Just leave them right where they are. It help you center it up and it's a little less work later. So, after you do that, you're going to take off this nut right here. This is a 17.

[00:29:10]You're going to use a pickle fork to separate that just like we did on the other side. And then you slap the other one in. And it's that easy.

[00:29:22]Boom.

[00:29:25]All right. Just like that. That would be old. Make sure those bolts are pulled through. And check out the difference between these. I mean, they don't even really look like the same part. This one is super cheap stamped steel. This one is cast. The thickness of the arms is different. Just you got to go with something like this. something OEM or OEM equivalent like this. It's just so much better. It's not worth risking it on the trail and breaking one of these things. The one thing I'm going to do before I put this in is actually just loosen up this nut. I'm not going to break this because it's easier if I have this all bolted up to break this with a pickle fork. Otherwise, it's just going to flop around. But I'm going to loosen up that nut cuz it's easier to get to it now. And then just like the other side, I'll be taking off the tie rod and the ball joints and all that. But that's going to be the idler arm going back in.

[00:30:10]You just tighten these down. Get these.

[00:30:11]You're going to have to put a wrench on the back side. You can't snug them down just from this side. Just want to make sure that they all stick through.

[00:30:18]Throw the nuts on. Tighten it down.

[00:30:20]You're good to go. Just kidding. One last thing. Don't forget to put in your grease cer in the top of this. So, I just turned out that bolt. Screw this in. As you can see, it's already pre greased. So, that's really nice. But this will make it easier to service it in the future. Front end here is to get the sway bar back into place. find this easiest if you just kind of position it and and work it up underneath these tie rods. Get it hanging on the actual pegs on the lower control arms and then just loosely put everything in. This is by far the easiest way to do it because otherwise you're trying to fight something. If you just do this side and button it all the way up, it's going to take a long time because you're going to be fighting the bar. So, just do everything loose, get it all tight, then throw the skid plate on. The very last step is going to be resetting the torsion bars. So hopefully you have those specifications correctly of the measurements you had before. We're just going to zip those in, make sure that they're right, and then it's time to take this on a test drive.

[00:31:23]All right, turn left and right.

[00:31:34]Well, there you go, guys. That was a monumental effort. That is quite a few parts, but one thing I'm really grateful for is all those parts fit perfectly. I didn't have to modify anything. Nothing was weird. All the hardware was there that I needed. That's really nice. So, big shout out to Luca Overland for not only supplying those parts, but also just providing awesome parts for us Monto enthusiasts to keep these things on the road. Hope you guys found this helpful. I know this video kind of is one of those things where it starts to get out of hand. I hope this is helpful for you guys who just want to see what this process is like and decide, do I want to do this on my own? How many other jobs do I want to do? Do I want to take it to a professional? Either way, if you guys enjoyed this video, let me know by giving it a like. If you got any questions, leave them in the comments.