A pretty easy job, about 20 minutes per side.

It help reduce the effect of steering movement when going over lines, bumps, railroad tracks, etc.

 

this is great, thanks a lot for this write up

 

With those old control arms being so worn, even in marking the eccentricsame I'd still get an alignment.

 

True. I plan to do that after I change the outer tie rods.

 

I replaced the tie rods today and it completed solved any issues of drift when hitting bumps, going over train tracks and other road related imperfections.

Now off to the alignment shop.

 

Just curious, how many miles on your car?

 

102K miles

 

Thanks!


I've got a way to go, then......

 

Twenty minutes per side is really quick even for a seasoned mechanic. I replaced the upper strut mounts and isolators and it took me thirty minutes per side.

 

Thanks for the post - wish I had this two years ago when mine were replaced. The right side one was leaking

 

Just did this job on one of my XF's with 77K miles.

It's not so easy on the 2011 XF with the 5.0L engine because the dummies mounted the transmission cooler on the driver's side with a bolt that goes down and blocks the suspension bolt on the front end of the control arm from coming out.

And that bolt is not accessible without removing the transmission cooler. Once you release the cooler, it's still in the way of accessing that bolt. I used a long pry bar to keep it raised up while I used one of my specially angled 13mm wrenches to undo the bolt a 1/5 of a turn at a time until there was clearance.

Real pain in the butt. The passenger side is a breeze.

 

Yeah, I thought I was going crazy and kept thinking, "Why would they design it this way???!!!" It turns out that they didn't. But, regardless, that trans cooler bolt issue was a total nightmare and completely ridiculous.

For those yet unafflicted, I'll explain a little more... the driver-side (U.S.) lower front control arm on my XFR (and apparently other models with the 5.0 engine) has a bolt that has to be accessed through the subframe. It wasn't designed that way, but the way it was stoopidly assembled means that the bolt was installed through the subframe, rather than the nut, which is reverse of what it was meant to be.

It wouldn't be so horrible, except that the transmission cooler prevents removal of the long control arm bolt. So, to remove the control arm bolt, the trans cooler AND the trans cooler base (two separate parts) have to be lifted (but not completely removed). Why? Because the trans cooler slides into, and is then bolted onto, the trans cooler base, which is subsequently bolted onto the subframe. To make it worse, the trans cooler base doesn't actually bolt onto the subframe, but rather some sort of floating/rotating nut inside of the subframe (again, why???), which blocks the control arm bolt from being pulled through the subframe.

So, because of the oompa-loompa assembly, I had to grab the floating trans cooler base nut inside of the small subframe hole with some small vice grips while trying to remove the control arm bolt with a flex-head ratchet, while also keeping the trans cooler jacked up off of the base.

What gave away that the assembly was screwed up (besides toddler-age common sense), was when I looked it up in the workshop manual out of sheer confused exasperation. In the manual, it clearly has the bolt going the other way through the control arm, with the nut being closer to the subframe, etc. As it's on the driver-side in the U.S., I flipped the image taken from the manual to make it clearer - the image from the manual is how it should've been done, so that the trans cooler bolt doesn't interfere with the control arm bolt removal. The image below the image from the manual is how it was mistakenly assembled. This assembly error was a complete time burglar. Boooo!!!