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DIY: Quest 05 control arms replacement pictorial guide
I did my control arms the other day and took some picture for somebody who might be interested to DIY this job. The dealership wanted like $900 and I said no way... I went with aftermarket - Dorman - arms for which I paid about $162 per pair from RockAuto Auto Parts. OEM control arms are about $250 per side, so $500 per pair. At the time of my order they (rockauto) did not have MOOG arms. Now they have. I've heard a lot of good things about MOOG arms. Anyway, Dorman arms are made in Taiwan (better than in China from what I read) and look really decent. The fitment was precise. How long will they last? Only time will tell.
I annotated the pictures but here is the summary. The job took longer than I thought it would. There was no problem with removing bolts, but... 1) It took awhile to separate the ball joint. The manual makes it look so simple, but in reality it took a lot of swinging with a sledge hammer and a broken pickle fork to persuade that thing to separate. A standard ball joint separator tool does nothing for Quest 05 ball joint. 2) Another thing is the pinch bolt. I could not reuse the old one, so 2 new bolts were in order. I wish I'd known this before because the Nissan dealership did not have them in stock, the bolt from Autozone was not exactly the same. 3) Then, doing the first side after the ball joint separated I accidentally got the axle out of place and could not figure out why the new arm was not aligning with the steering knuckle. After the axle was put back into place the control arm was easy to install. So, for somebody doing this job I'd keep these 3 things in mind. There is a youtube video of a guy doing this job on the same car and he did not seem to run into these problems (or may be he just did not film them). Anyway, that was my experience, yours might be different. Hope this helps, let me know if you have questions and I'll see if I know the answers.
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Last edited by Starless; 04-11-2012 at 08:02 PM. |
#2
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Thank you for the post. Very informative. I'll copy the post to the DIY forum as well.
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#3
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I'm linking the You Tube video I mentioned before. It's for 2004 Quest. Do not make the mistake this guy made. Honestly I do not think this is possible on 2005 Quest because unless that pin is all the way up the bolt will not go through the hole. But anyway...
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#4
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I still have that Quest and did control arms multiple times. Some improvements in my technique: I use a steering knuckle separator tool which also work on this type of pinch bolt and ball joint set up. Works great. No more stripping punch bolts because you can position the ball joint pin perfectly using the separator .
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arms, control, diy, guide, pictorial, quest, replacement |
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