BMW E60 Control Arm Replacement | New Rear Toe Adjustment Arms

[craigchamberlain]

I’m just back in from the garage where I spent the entire day battling with the nearside rear suspension on my 2008 E61 535d. My intention was to remove the lower wishbone and replace the two pressed in bushes using the special tool kit I got on Amazon. After raising the car and deflating the air springs I sprayed all the bolts with penetrating oil. The very first nut I tried to loosen was the rearmost inboard lower wishbone bolt and it wouldn’t budge even with max power on my Dewalt XR impact wrench! I managed to get a few cracks by standing on a 2 foot breaker bar and then a bit later got the nut loosened. The integral link bolt was absolutely fine albeit VERY tight, and the frontmost inboard wishbone bolt was also straightforward.

What wasn’t at all straightforward was that flamin’ upper guide arm inboard mount. That’s the one you had trouble with in this video. But in my case the nut came off with just a bit of persuasion but the bolt itself was seized inside the bush and although I could turn it, I couldn’t extract it. I must have spent 2 hours or more on it just spraying penetrating oil from all directions and constantly turning it but I couldn’t get it out. I didn’t want to level against the chassis mounting lugs because they look quite fragile. In the end I had to cut through the bush and bolt using a Dewalt multi-tool which wasn’t as good as a reciprocating saw but eventually did the job. What an absolute nightmare!

I was also unable to replace the wishbone bushes as my tool just didn’t work very well. To be honest they still feel very good and just have a small amount of rubber delamination around the boss. I had more success with the integral joint balljoint and managed to remove the replace it using another special tool I got on Amazon. The only problem I had with it was getting the balljoint seated sufficiently to engage the circlip.

I’ve still got the other upper control arm to replace but hopefully it’ll go better and then I’ll just have the other side to do! Not the most enjoyable day in the garage but sometimes that’s how it goes!

[simplelangperorock]

hey George,
mine were seized too on both sides. I just used my sawzall and bought new sets of eccentric bolts and washers

[grahamwatts]

Great Video - Im about to replace all 3 arms on both side, top rear-front and back, and bottom rear-back. Once done, i will settle the car down, over a pit, and torque the bolts/nuts up to specification and then get the motor tracked. Did you notice, that the torque specification for these bolts is very high, pending what ones of course.

[awowen]

Great videos as always. Where did you get the control arms kit from?
Thanks

[cts]

Good video but one crucial thing is wrong. You DONT tighten the eccentric bolt fully down when the car is jacked up. The wheel hub must be at ride height when tighten this bolt fully down. Otherwise you always have a torsional force on the bushing when the wheel hub is on ride height which wears it very fast.

[radianm]

Why does everybody show that eccentric bolt half way out but nobody wants to show how they got it even half way out….

[jonot]

Hey George, can you reuse eccentric bolts if they look good?

[smc]

Great video and very helpful...does anyone know if the bolts for toe and camber are the same? I had a similar thing happen at Kwik fit ...I can't find toe bolts online only camber bolts ...

[awowen]

Hi George, where did you get the kit from? Thanks

[hanynowsky]

What were the symptoms of this worn rear toe arm?

[craigchamberlain]

I'd strongly recommend NOT using an impact wrench on the locking wheel bolts. I always go round the car with a breaker bar and slacken all the locking bolts that I intend to remove. Then I just spin them off with the impact wrench when I remove each wheel. I had got away with using the impact wrench for a while but eventually it caused my locking adapter to fail and it was a real pain trying to figure out which adapter I needed to get from BMW or from online stores on ebay. If you are going to use the impact wrench then at least buy a spare lock adapter before it breaks as that makes it much easier to match up.