So, installing the BMR fixed control arm actually starts inside the cab.
There's a main bolt underneath the seats here that you have to get to and pull that out
so you can loosen the control arm mount under the vehicle.
Now, removing the seats is actually pretty easy.
There's two plastic clips on either side, and it's kind of hard to show you, but I'll
kind of point to it here.
All you've gotta do is press on those two clips and you can pull the seat out.
Now, with those rear seat bottoms removed, you're gonna expose the bolt holding on the
control arm mount.
This is tightened down to about 130-foot pounds, so you might need some muscle to break it
loose.
We're gonna go ahead and try it with our impact wrench here, and that's an 18-millimeter socket.
With that bolt removed, it's time for us to put the car up on the lift, and then we can
go underneath and start removing our control arm.
Now that the car is up on the lift, it's time for us to start pulling all the bolts holding
the control arm and the control arm mount to the vehicle.
Now, the control arm is under tension even when the car is not under load, so what I
strongly recommend is you take this bolt and nut out first.
This is the one that connects the control arm to the axle.
Once you remove that, we can start removing all the other ones without any tension, and
this is gonna be a 21-millimeter socket.
All right.
Now that we have the 21-millimeter nut removed from the control arm axle bolt, it's time
for us to remove the bolt from the control arm and the axle.
Now, it's still got a little bit of tension on it, so I'm gonna use a pole jack to support
the rear axle, and that should give it enough room for me to knock that bolt loose.
So, when I pulled that bolt, you saw how the control arm kind of sprung up.
That was that tension that I was talking about.
Now, when I was unthreading this, there aren't actually any threads in there, but I didn't
want to pry on this and force it too much because I didn't want to mess up the threads.
So, even though it's not threaded, you can kind of twist it to help it work its way out.
So, with that bolt removed, it's time for us to loosen the control arm mount itself.
Now, the instructions might say that you have to lower the gas tank.
You don't actually have to.
Since we pulled the bolt underneath the seats and since we're pulling the two bolts holding
the mount to the vehicle, it'll actually give us just enough room to get to the rest of
the control arm bolts and nuts, and we can pull it out without actually having to remove
the gas tank.
So, I'm gonna show you how to do that now.
It's gonna be an 18-millimeter socket with some pretty long extensions.
Now that everything is loosened up here, it's kinda hard to see, I'll show you in a second,
but the only thing that's left is a 21-millimeter nut and an 18-millimeter bolt holding the
control arm to the mount itself.
Now, since we've technically uninstalled the mount from the vehicle and it's just hanging
there, I can actually push it out of the way like this and that gives me just enough room
to get to that nut and bolt.
For that, you're gonna need that 21-millimeter socket and that 18-millimeter wrench.
For your socket, you probably want about a 10-inch extension.
Okay.
So with that little trick, avoiding the whole gas tank ordeal, our control arm is now actually
no longer connected to anything, so it's just a matter of pulling it out.
Now that we have our stock control arm removed from the vehicle, I just wanted to quickly
point out some of the differences here.
This will be kind of a helpful little guide for you to determine if your upper control
arm is shot like mine obviously is.
First things first, you can see on the stock control arm you have this rubber bushing inside
here.
This isn't really connected to much.
You've just got two little connecting points on the inside of this little hole here, and
you can see how cracked and faded everything is.
That's a tell-tale sign that your control arm is pretty much shot.
With this loose rubber cracked like this, it's gonna allow that axle to pivot up and
down, and that's actually how you feel axle wrap and wheel hop.
Now, with our new BMR control arm, you can see we have this nice thick poly bushing with
a nice metal inlet right here, and you also have this grease fitting to make sure your
poly bushing doesn't end up like this after a few years.
When we install this, just make sure your grease fitting is facing downward, that way,
you can get to it and fill it up as you need to.
Now it's time for us to install our new rear upper control arm into the vehicle.
We're gonna go ahead and install it with the bolt holding the arm to the mount first.
We want a little bit of play in there, as you saw when we removed the old one.
And then once that's secure, we're gonna go ahead and put the other bolt in, which holds
the arm to the axle.
Now that our control arm is secured to the mount and hand-tightened, we're gonna go ahead
and secure the arm to the axle with the original bolt and nut.
Now, you might have noticed when you pull the original control arm off that the bolt
is flagged and the original arm has a stop.
That's so that you don't have to hold this end with a wrench while you loosen the nut.
In this case, you're gonna have to, and this is gonna be an 18-millimeter wrench and the
same 21-millimeter socket.
Okay.
Now our control arm is technically secured to the vehicle both on the mount and the axle.
However, the mount is not yet secured.
Before we tighten everything on the control arm itself, we wanna get that mount tight
to the vehicle.
That way when we tighten down the arm, our pinion angle will be correct.
All right.
With our control arm mount tightened up, it's time for us to tighten down the bolts on the
control arm itself.
Now, we're gonna work front-to-back here, and with the order that we went in, unfortunately,
we can't get our power tools back where we were originally.
That's okay.
We can go ahead and use our wrenches here.
So, to tighten the bolt and nut holding the arm to the mount, you're gonna need a 21-millimeter
wrench, and it's helpful to have an 18-millimeter ratchet wrench for the other side.
With the bolt securing the arm to the mount tightened, now the last step is tightening
down the bolt and nut securing the arm to the axle.
Now, again, you're gonna need an 18-millimeter wrench to hold that flag nut and you're gonna
need your 21-millimeter socket to hit the nut on the other side.
All right.
So our control arm is now connected to our vehicle and everything is tightened down.
Mechanically speaking, you're good to go, but remember that grease fitting I mentioned.
We're gonna go ahead and fill the cavity on that poly bushing, ensures this thing has
a nice long life.
All right.
Now with that poly bushing all greased up, we're all set underneath the car.
Our last step is putting the car down and re-installing that final bolt underneath the
seats.
With our car down off the lift, we're gonna go ahead and put in that last bolt for the
control arm mount.
Now, it's very important that this is tightened down to the correct foot-pounds because it
holds the mount and thus the control arm in place.
Really, the other two bolts on the bottom are just to kind of keep it lined up.
This is gonna bet set to 129 foot-pounds.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and screw it in with my air gun, then I'm gonna double-check the
foot-pounds with my foot-pound wrench here.
So, with our bolt tightened down to 129 foot-pounds, our last step is just throwing in our bottom
seats.
All right, guys, so with your rear seats re-installed, that actually wraps up my review and install
of BMR's fixed upper rear control arm, fitting all '05 to '09 GTs.
I'm Travis.
Thanks for watching.
And for all things Mustang, keep it right here at americanmuscle.com.
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