DIY: Lower Control Arm/Wishbone Replacement

[Maverik259]

Ok here goes another one. So this is for those out of warranty that prematurely start to get that god awful embarrassing squeak from behind the front wheels.
This DIY only covers the driver side as that's all I needed but it's the same process for both sides.

Props to Dush for the torque values from Newtis.

[Maverik259]

Tools:

Drill
Impact wrench or breaker bar
Rivet pop tool or flat blade
17mm socket and wheel lock key
8mm socket
2x21mm socket
1 1/16" socket
21mm box wrench or adjustable wrench
Alligator wrench
6mm hex head
Torque wrench
Jack
Jack stands
Light

[Maverik259]

Step 1: Jack up car at center point trough sound deasoning lower cover. Toward the back middle there are two dots. Right behind this is the jack point. It won't feel like much so I lifted slowly to make sure there were no issues. The jack stops pretty quickly so I felt ok.

If you don't want to mare up your cover then probably take it off. I didn't car and wasn't about to undo the 30 bolts and push tabs to do so.

Put the car on jack stands. I opted to do both sides for extra security.

[Maverik259]

Step 2: Remove wheel with impact wrench and wheel lock nut. Take opportunity to clean out rust from inside wheel from hub. Came clean really easy.

[Maverik259]

Step 3: locate the wishbone and looking at the new part you will see there are two bolt locations and a pivot joint that's escaping me right now as to the name of it but you get the point. The back bolt where it connects to the frame is covered by another small cover. There's like 4 8mm and 3 push tabs to remove this. I used a drill here cuz I'm lazy and my shoulders don't like holding things in the air and twisting lol.

[Maverik259]

Step 4: loosen back bolt connect to the frame. This is 21mm on both sides and required my breaker bar. Which so happens to be the handle of my jack. Once you loosen it (it's a bich) you then have to have one 21mm wrench or socket on the nut and then loosen the bolt. The nut will fall off. I left the bolt in until the end for security. Wasn't quite sure what would fall or move etc.

[Maverik259]

Step 5: move down the shaft of the control arm to the next bolt. Now this bolt is what connects the strut to bottom of the car. Once this bolt is loose the arm will be very floppy and maneuverable if that bakes sense as the next bolt is a ball joint. This again is 2x 21mm. However the catch is that the side closest to the front of the car has little clearance so another socket wouldn't fit and I did t have a box wrench that large so I had to use this adjustable wrench I had and never thought I'd use. Thanks Dad.

Note. It's also very low to the ground and I couldn't get my breaker bar on it and clear the floor or the car. So I used my impact wrench to get it to spin. And then back to the 21mm socket and adjustable wrench to fully loosen.

Now I removed both the first and second bolts from the carriage and let the arm fall down. The next part was fun. And annoying

[Maverik259]

Step 6: now we get to remove the lower nut and ball joint. Under the knuckle there is a 27mm or 1 1/16" 16 tooth nut. Idk if it's 16 but a normal hex socket won't work. Need the multi tooth kind. This was actually quite easy to loosen with the breaker bar. Once off though the ball joint is pretty set in the knuckle. I had to whack it several times with a small sledge hammer I have to get it out. BMW has a special tool press that push in it out. Poppy cock. It's never going back in my car so smash away! On about the 8th hit it literally popped straight on and fell on the floor. Easy peezy.

[Maverik259]

Now the first nut and the bottom nut are crush nuts and should be replaced. However I didn't realize this at first and didn't do that and just tightened it all up to spec with loctite which is all I had. So ya don't recommend my way but it's loctite. It ain't moving anyway.

[Maverik259]

Step 7: Put new arm in place and put the ball joint into knuckle. Put bolt that goes into the frame of the car in to hold it in place and then line up the lower bracket of strut and slide in the second bolt.

Now for the annoying bit. Tightening the ball joint. So the darn thing had a 6mm hex head on the bolt that protrudes through the knuckle. So you have to hold this taught and somehow tighten the 27mm nut around that same bolt. There's not enough room around the nut for a box wrench and an open ended one wouldn't work cuz it doesn't have the teeth. Only thing I could figure is to use this pair of vice grips I have to hold the nut from spinning as I tightened the hex head down. Once I did this I could tighten the nut down to spec. 80N-m.

HAND tighten both the bolt on the frame and the strut. Do not torque down. They need to be at "ride height" to seat properly.

[Maverik259]

Step 8: take your jack and place under the bolt where the strut is attached to the new control arm. Only place I could figure to do this. Again BMW uses some floor hydraulic jack that attaches to wheel hub bolt points.

Jack it up slowly to make the arm close to level. I say slowly cuz you don't want to start lifting the SUV up off the stands. Not sure what "ride hide" was so I assumed close as to straight I could get as measured with my mk.1 eye ball unit was good enough for me. Then tighten the bolt to 165N-m plus 90deg

Then tighten the strut mounting bolt to 140N-m.

I'll attach the pic of all the torque values. And the NEWTIS page.

https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/f...ion/1VnXRNyLXT

[Maverik259]

Step 9: put back on wheel. Remove jacks. Lower car and torque down wheel bolts. Go for a test drive. And revel in the silence!!!!!

Final step is to get an 4 wheel alignment and steering alignment especially if you have active steering like me. Luckily my dealer had an opening this morning the day after I did the job so I didn't have to wait too long. But as you can see in the pick apparently I didn't even need one cuz all my values were still in the green from my last one 8 months ago. Which I was a little surprised about but maybe I'm just that good. Haha

[X5Guy]

Very detailed write up. Thanks bc I'll be replacing mine in the next couple of weeks with a mechanic friend at his shop. How long did it take you to complete the job?

[Russmov]

This is a great write up for anyone needing to do this. If I end up needing to do it, I will be looking for this thread again. Thanks!

[turboawd]

great write up. but replaced only because of a squeek? couldnt spray some lubricant on the rubber bushings?

[Mr.47]

Originally Posted by turboawd

great write up. but replaced only because of a squeek? couldnt spray some lubricant on the rubber bushings?

That's a big no no, any "oil like/based" lubricant will accelerate wear on high stress rubber bushing especially if you have small fine cracks on them.

[DuSh]

Damn, your DIYs are so good! Please keep your car for a long time - so we can have some other DIYs too. These DIYs will become more and more important as many owners have their warranties ended recently.

[pits200]

The old one appeared pristine. Any play in the ball joint or cracks in the bushings that weren't picked up in the pic

[pits200]

The old one appeared pristine. Any play in the ball joint or cracks in the bushings that weren't picked up in the pic

[Maverik259]

Originally Posted by pits200

The old one appeared pristine. Any play in the ball joint or cracks in the bushings that weren't picked up in the pic

Originally Posted by X5Guy

Very detailed write up. Thanks bc I'll be replacing mine in the next couple of weeks with a mechanic friend at his shop. How long did it take you to complete the job?

Thanks man. I could definitely have taken more photos but hopefully the words make up for it. Any questions let me know! Took me about 3 hours but I was being lazy and slow just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. Next one will take me about 1.5-2 hours easy. It's actually really straight forward.

Originally Posted by turboawd

great write up. but replaced only because of a squeek? couldnt spray some lubricant on the rubber bushings?

Ya it was a bad squeak. Think it was coming from the ball joint itself but couldn't sure. I did spray some to help with the embarrassment once I determined I was going to replace it. Nothing like driving around in a $100k car that you take pride in and come to a stop light and squeak the whole way there like some old ghetto Cadillac or Lincoln. Not my style.

Originally Posted by DuSh

Damn, your DIYs are so good! Please keep your car for a long time - so we can have some other DIYs too. These DIYs will become more and more important as many owners have their warranties ended recently.

Thanks Dush! Hope it helps!

Originally Posted by pits200

The old one appeared pristine. Any play in the ball joint or cracks in the bushings that weren't picked up in the pic

Ya it looked fine to me. There was a crack in the rubber of the joint that connects to the frame of the car but that's all I noticed. Didn't care once I plugged it in and the noise went away. There is a SIB on it for the bushings failing early. It looks pristine cuz it's only got 30k miles. I'll add some pics of the crack when I get home.

[Maverik259]

The crack is pretty noticeable. And only apparent on the most inner bushing.

Now I don't think this is where the noise was stemming from but perhaps.

And the fun part is. While backing out of the driveway this morning I heard the noise return. Now I just need to determine if it's from the part I replaced or the passenger side now.

[X5Guy]

I can only hear my driver side making the noise. But when bmw checked my car, they said they found the passenger side control arm vaguely making the noise also.