Installation Time
(approx) 3 Hours
Difficulty Level:
Light to Moderate mechanical skill required.
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So if you own an '07 to '13 Silverado, maybe you take your truck off-road often or you just put it through a lot of abuse and you're looking for an affordable upper control arm upgrade, one that can stand up to all that abuse and all that off-road stuff, you should be checking out Zone Offroad's HD Upper Control Arm. There are a few options that we sell, this one's gonna be the most affordable. Now there are a lot of control arms that we sell for the Silverado, I like this one because it still uses factory style rubber bushings and it's the most affordable one. So it's a really good upgrade, it doesn't cost a lot, and it keeps your ride comfort compared to those other control arms that we sell. The other ones do include poly bushings and stiffer points of articulation. So while those are also big upgrades, your ride quality might suffer a little bit. Other reason why I really like this control arm is it's a fully boxed design. It's fully welded so it's still a lot stronger than the factory control arm. Also includes a really nice upgraded ball joint that's gonna stand up to all that abuse and all that off-road fun that you might have and it has a grease fitting on it, so if you put it through a lot of articulation and you put a lot of abuse through it, go ahead and throw some grease in there, keep it lubed up and it should last a lot longer than the factory ball joint even still. Now the install on this is a couple of nuts and bolts. However it is still pretty involved, it is a lengthy install I'd say to take you about three hours. You can still get this done with basic hand tools but it might be a bit of a struggle if you don't have power tools. For that reason, I'm gonna give the install moderate two out of three wrenches on my difficulty meter. So if you like the Zone Offroad control arm, you should stick around. I'm gonna show you guys how to get this job done in just a moment. To install your new upper control arm, you'll need the following tools: a full metric wrench set, standard drive ratchets, a full metric socket set, long extension, marker, pry bar, and a torque wrench. Optional but helpful tools include swivel sockets, a bungee cord for your calipers, a cordless impact, and a hammer. So before we actually start attempting to remove the upper control arm, we're gonna take the easy route and we're gonna remove the strut from the truck entirely. That's gonna free up a lot of space, that's gonna make it a lot easier for us to remove the bolts that are holding the upper control arm to the frame. Now to remove the strut from the truck, it's actually pretty easy. All you gotta do is pull the three nuts on top of the strut inside the engine bay. To get to those nuts, you're probably gonna need at least a 10-inch extension. You'll also need an 18-millimeter socket. Now that we removed those three nuts from the strut, we're gonna put our truck up on the lift, we're gonna pull our tire off, and then we can actually start tackling the control arm itself. All right, so now that we got our truck up on the lift and we got our wheel removed, we're gonna start tackling everything inside the fender well here. First step is disconnecting our sway bar end link. To remove this, you're gonna need a 15-millimeter wrench and a 15-millimeter socket. So once you've disconnected the sway bar end link from the lower control arm, normally you would be able to tackle the hardware that secures the bottom of the strut to the lower control arm. And you can pull the strut from the truck. That's if your truck is bone stock. We actually have a leveling kit and that hardware on the bottom of our strut is actually interfering with the axle shaft. Now we're gonna disconnect the axle shaft itself. That's gonna give us a little bit of play but not enough, so what we're actually gonna do we're gonna skip ahead and we're gonna disconnect our upper ball joint. It's gonna allow us to lower the entire steering assembly, that'll give us enough clearance to disconnect the hardware from the bottom of the strut, then we can pull the strut from the vehicle. All right, so now we've disconnected that axle shaft, we can start tackling the ball joint. You're gonna wanna break it loose with your wrench, not the ratcheting side, and we you'll need an 18-millimeter for this. You wanna keep the nut on the threads enough that it can still support your steering assembly, don't wanna remove the nut entirely. Once you got that loosened, you can pop the ball joint out of the knuckle. To do that, it's good to just have a pry bar or ball-peen hammer. All right, so the nut on our ball joint is loosened and the ball joint is ready to be popped out of the knuckle. Before we do that, we're gonna play it safe. We're actually gonna remove our caliper and we're also going to remove our rotor. To remove your caliper, we're gonna hang it out of the way. We're gonna need an 18-millimeter socket. All right, so once you pop the ball joint loose from the knuckle, you can actually take the tension off here and you can remove the nut entirely. That's gonna free your upper control arm from the knuckle itself. As you can see, we actually kept our rotor on. I'm gonna have a friend with some helping hands here to keep this in place. This is gonna wanna fall down since I disconnected the axle shaft. Good practice here as well, you also wanna keep some tension on the upper control arm using a pry bar. It's gonna wanna spring up on you, so when you hold down on it, let it loosely up that way so that it's not gonna fly out of your hands. All right, so our ball joint has been popped free of the steering knuckle, you can now remove the nut on the stud of the ball joint and it will free the control arm from the knuckle itself. Now keep in mind, the bushings on the upper control arm are under tension. So when you remove that nut, it's gonna want to fly up out of the knuckle. Good practice is to have a pry bar, keep some pressure on the upper control arm as you do this. You also want to disconnect the ABS line from on top of the upper control arm before you do this. All right, now that our upper control arm is free from the knuckle, we can finally remove our strut. Now that everything has dropped down enough, we have enough clearance underneath our axle shaft here that we can tackle the nuts and bolts on the bottom of the strut. In the case of our leveling kit, we're gonna need a 17-millimeter socket and a 17-millimeter wrench. Once I pull this hardware, I can finally remove the strut from the vehicle. All right, now that our strut is removed the last step we have to tackle before we actually start removing the control arm itself is the brake line bracket, that's a 10-millimeter socket. All right, now we're finally ready to remove our upper control arm but before we do that, we want to mark the bolt plates. That's for your alignment. You will have to get an alignment once you install your new upper control arms but this will at least get you in the ballpark. All right, so now that we have our bolt plates marked, we can finally remove the upper control arms. To do that, you're gonna do a 21-millimeter socket and you'll need a 21-millimeter wrench. These are pretty tight, so you might have to break them loose with a breaker bar first. So, now we have our factory control arm removed from our truck. Wanted to point out some differences and similarities on the table here, so you can really see why the Zone Offroad arm is a good choice. A couple of similarities to note, these do still use factory style rubber bushings. So that's nice because when you're driving around on the streets, this thing's gonna offer a quiet and comfy ride. It's not gonna make anything noisy or stiff. That's really where the similarities end. You can also tell that these things are way beefier, they're a lot bigger than the factory arm. And that's all thanks to the eighth-inch thick welded steel construction that these provide. One thing I really like about these is Zone Offroad says that these will easily accommodate up to a 4 to 6-inch suspension lift. If you're running something like that, you probably take your truck off-road quite a lot and you do put your truck through a lot of abuse. That's the other reason I really like these, they come with upgraded ball joints and a nice little touch that Zone threw in. They actually have grease fittings on them. So if you do put your truck through a lot of articulation, you're putting a lot of stress on these joints, you can grease them up and they will last a lot longer than the factory ball joints. So your new control arm installs the same way the original one came out. Thanks to the new bushings, it can be a tight fit, so when you go to put it in the mounting locations, you might have to have a dead blow mallet with you, help seat it in there properly. All right, now that we have all the hardware retaining the upper control arm in place and relatively tightened down, we're gonna make sure it's to spec. You want 100 foot-pounds on either side, so you're gonna need a torque wrench for this. All right, now that our upper control arm is good to go, I'm gonna lower everything down so I can reinstall the strut. Keep in mind, you still have this ABS sensor right here. You wanna make sure as you're lowering everything down, that it's not tugging on this too much. All right, once you have your strut bottom secured to the lower control arm and tighten down, you can go ahead and raise the entire assembly up, that way the boss of the knuckle will meet the stud on the new ball joint. Once you got that lined up and the ball joint is seated, you can tighten it down using the provided nut and flat washer. To tighten that down, you're gonna need a 19-millimeter wrench. All right, now that our ball joint is secured, we're gonna reinstall our caliper. Again, you're gonna need an 18-millimeter socket to tighten this down. All right, with our brake caliber reinstalled, we can reconnect our axle shaft. Again, to tighten these bolts down, you're gonna need a 15-millimeter socket. All right, now that our axle shaft is reconnected, we can reconnect our sway bar end link. To tighten all this down, you're gonna need a 15-millimeter socket and a 15-millimeter wrench. All right, now that our axle shaft is reconnected, we can also reconnect our sway bar end link. In order to tighten this down, you'll need a 15-millimeter socket and a 15-millimeter wrench. All right, with our sway bar end link tightened down, we can reinstall our brake line bracket and our ABS sensor bracket. They do provide you with new hardware in the kit, little 11-millimeter bolt with two flat washers and a nylon locking nut. So you'll need an 11-millimeter socket and wrench to tighten all this down. All right, now that that bracket is reconnected, we're gonna lower our truck. We're gonna go inside the engine bay. We're gonna reinstall those three nuts we loosened on our strut earlier. I'm gonna leave the wheel off for now because once we do that, I'm gonna double-check everything. We did remove a lot of components, so you wanna make sure everything's tightened down and to spec before we wrap up. So, once you've got your strut bolted back up, go ahead and do another check underneath here, make sure everything's tightened down, everything's to spec and you can throw your wheel back on. And that'll wrap up the install. That also wraps up my review of Zone Offroad's HD Upper Control Arm, fitting your '07 to '13 Silverado 1500. I'm Travis, thanks for watching. For all things Silverado and Sierra, keep it right here americantrucks.com.
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Zone Offroad ZONC2310
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Installation Info
Installation Time
(approx) 3 Hours
Difficulty Level:
Light to Moderate mechanical skill required.
What's in the Box
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