How to Replace Front Shocks 1988-2002 GMC Sierra 1500

Safely raise and support your vehicle on the frame so your suspension can hang. Now that we've safely raised the vehicle, let's remove this by using a small pry bar right in this little slot. Now you can see your 22-millimeter lug nuts, remove those. And now we'll just do the same thing to the other side. Now that we have the wheel off, we have a clear view of what we need to do. To get to the upper part of the shock, we're gonna remove this portion right here using a little forkey tool that looks like this. Grab these little push clips, let's pop right out, do the same to them all. There we are.

Now it's time to remove both bolts. You can start wherever you want. I'm gonna start at the top using an 18-millimeter on one side and an 18 on the other. Okay, looks good. I'm just gonna leave that on there a couple of threads. We'll do the same on the bottom. Start that nut on there a couple of threads, hit with some more penetrant. Now let's start driving the bolts out. It's important to make sure you have the nut started on, and if you want to put it flush, that would be better. The reason for that is because you don't want to damage the threads on your bolt when you go ahead and bonk on it with your hammer.

The next thing to do is to apply a little bit of upward pressure on the lower control arm. You can use a floor jack or a post jack, whatever you've got, but just kind of lift it up so you can get a little bit more movement with that bolt. There we are. Grab that washer. Let's grab the shock, see if we can move it around. Up and out. Let's coat this shanked area with some copper never-seize or grease, a little bit like that. Now you have the threaded area, I'm gonna say it's your prerogative to use some thread locker, but I would recommend it. Awesome.

We're gonna take the long bolt, that'll be the one that goes through the top of the new shock. Let's go ahead and compress our shock three to five times. It's time to get the new shock in here. Go right up in between the control arm and go right up in the past and try to get the lower portion in to where it belongs first. You might need to compress the shock a little bit. All right. So now it's sitting down where it needs to go, I'll get that upper portion started in. Don't forget your washer and then, of course, the nut. Do the same thing to the lower.

So to line up the holes, it can be a little bit difficult. You might need to go up a little bit or down a little bit with your control arm to line it up. Let's snug these up. Now let's torque them to manufacturer specifications. Torque both these bolts to 66-foot pounds. Let's get this out of here. Let's get this back on here. Let's start at the center. There we are. Let's get the wheel on and torque it to manufacturer specifications. Start on one of those lug nuts. Now we're just gonna start on all the lug nuts, we'll bottom them out and then we'll torque them to 120-foot pounds. Torque these to 120-foot pounds. It's torqued. We'll get our cover on here. Awesome. And now we'll just do the same thing to the other side.