How to Replace Front Lower Control Arm 2013-17 Nissan Sentra

You wanna keep in mind when you're doing this job after you're done you're gonna wanna go to a local garage and have the vehicle aligned so you don't have premature tire wear. Take the wheel off. I'm gonna use a 21-millimeter socket. Remove the wheel. Take this lower ball joint bolt out. This holds the knuckle to the ball joint. Use a 14-millimeter wrench and a 14-millimeter socket wrench on the backside on the nut and get that off. Then I'm just gonna use a punch and punch that bolt out. Just hit it with a hammer. Slide that bolt out. I'm just gonna use a little rust penetrant and just soak the ball joint in the knuckle a little bit. It's a little bit rusted. Before I take that out completely I'm gonna take the other bolts out.

Now I need to access this bolt but for the sake of the video I'm going to take this shield down, you don't necessarily have to take this down to access that bolt. You just take these two pins out on this side and then the 10-millimeter bolts up the top. I wanna take this bolt out, I'm gonna use a 22-millimeter socket right here and a 18-millimeter wrench on the nut side. Take that out. Slide the bolt out. Now we'll take this bolt out and use a 18-millimeter wrench on the nut, 18-millimeter socket on the bolt. Now I'll just use a pry bar, to pry this out over here.
All right, this ball joint is not good anyway so I'm gonna use a pickle fork and try to get it to loosen from the knuckle. There is other tools you can use, you can use one that's got a clamp and kind of pushes down on the ball joint. That will work too. And here it comes. And take the new control arm, slide it backside in first and try to line this bushing up over here. There we go. Just try to get this bushing lined up over here. Try to make the control arm flatter, it might be a little bit easier. Take this bolt, line this up, put the nut on top. Now before I tighten that one up, just get this bolt lined up. Just pry this out a little bit. There we go. Just tap it in. Nut on the inside. Now I'll use my 18-millimeter wrench, put that on the nut side. I'm gonna use the 22-millimeter socket. Just gonna snug this before I torque it. All right, then I'm gonna torque this bolt to 76 foot-pounds. You wanna keep in mind you want the lower control arm to be as close to level as possible as how ride height is possible when it's on the ground. Ideal, they want you to torque this while the vehicle is sitting on its own weight, but it's not that easy to get a torque wrench in here while this is on the ground. So just raise that up, torque that now, 76 foot-pounds. And I'll put the 18-millimeter wrench on the nut right here and then tighten this bolt. Snug it up first. And then torque this to 74 foot-pounds.

All right. Line up the lower ball joint and give it a little tap. Just wiggle it in there. There you go. Take a rubber mallet, just tap it in position. Take the lower ball joint bolt, slide it in place, take the nut, put the nut back on. All right. Now I'll just take a 14-millimeter socket on the bolt side and I'll torque this nut to 41 foot-pounds. Put the wheel back on and the lug nuts. Now I'm gonna torque these lug nuts to 83 foot-pounds in a star pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. Just go around again, double-check.