Control arm & ball joint tightening torque
 

I have that familiar clunk again ... you know ... the one that you hear going into and out of parking lots and while driving slowly over bumps. This time I am going to change the control arms and ball joints myself. All the parts arrived today, so I am hoping to install them tomorrow.

Does anyone know if there is a post that outlines the tightening torque for all the fasteners? As an alternative, does anyone happen to know what the torques are or have a manual that they could look it up and post it? I tried to buy a Bentley manual for my X5 but it seems they don't make one.

I need the torque specifications for the following bolts:

- Upper ball joint to the spindle (the two smaller bolts)
- Upper ball joint to upper control arm (the nylock nut)
- Lower ball joint to the spindle (the nylock nut)
- Upper and lower control arms to the frame
- Bolts that hold the skid plate to the front cross member (if those torques are important)

Any help is appreciated!

http://www.xoutpost.com/articles/x5/suspension/

Try that.

Thanks!
 

I should have looked there first :doh:! Still getting used to the board

Now that I have the lower control arm information, would it be reasonably safe to assume the same torque specs for the upper control arm are the same? If so, all I need now is the torque for the two torx bolts that hold the upper ball joint to the spindle.

Thanks again!

which bolts are you looking at?

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/diagrams/f/b/193.png

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/diagrams/i/r/188.png

the cv boot diy article pretty much removes everything and has tq specs for it all as well...

# 16
 

The bolt labeled # 16 in the first diagram. It is a Torx head and holds the ball joint in the spindle. The CV boot replacement article didn't remove this ball joint as it was ceased into the spindle. I hope mine isn't!!

Thanks again.

TIS didn't have much info on that. The only thing that looks like it's relevent states it should be 14Nm and tightened in the unloaded state (which you can only do since you can't tightened it on the car...)

I would look to see how much force/tq it takes to remove it and then use the same amount to put it back again...

I just swapped out the control arm, ball joint, tension rod and swaybar link. And the Ball joint was seized. I ended up doing just what thecleaner said to do. tried turning it. Pain in the ass, but it broke..

http://www.xoutpost.com/x5-e53-forum/...ght=ball+joint

Thanks hayaku
 

Thanks a lot for looking that up. I doubt it's 14 Nm since that would be 10.5 ft-lbs which doesn't seem like enough considering it's a ball joint (although it might be since those bolts aren't under any real load; they just hold the base of the ball joint into the socket in the spindle where the real load exists).

I'll check the torque with my torque wrench before I take it off and go from there. If it really is 10.5 ft-lbs, I should be able to verify that with the torque wrench pretty easily. If it is more and there is rust on the bolts, the torque required to undo those bolts will be more than what would actually be their design torque.

I really appreciate you looking that up for me hayaku!!

de nada... best of luck

Twisting my ball (joint)
 

Thanks KUCAK for that link; better to find it now before I start than be stuck in the middle and looking for a reference to it here as you did!

Do you happen to recall what size torx socket I need for that bolt? I suppose I should make sure I have it before digging into it tomorrow. Also, one of the responses to the thread you linked me to said something about the torx heads being "reverse"; are they reverse thread? I wouldn't want to bust them off by trying to turn them the wrong way!

Thanks again ...

Forbez how r u doing? Perry here - been a while... I am going to do the same thing to my '04 4.8. Same thing going into parking lots... just a shimmie-shake kinda feel to the rig. Did you run into any problems when doing this?
thx

Ball joints and stuff
 

Hey Perry,

Glad you asked. It was all pretty straight forward except the thrust arm ball joints. Do yourself a favor and replace only the lower control arms and the sway bar links and see if the problem goes away. Those were all fairly straight forward to replace. In general, everything comes apart as you think it should, but when you put it back together, don't tighten the bolts that hold the control arm to the frame of the X until the weight of the car is on the suspension. If you tighten these bolts with the X in the air, there will be preload on the rubber bushings once you put the X back on the ground and the rubber bushings will prematurely fail. The best way to do it is with a pair of ramps.

It was the the thrust arm ball joints that was a huge pain in the butt to remove. You might be able to change the thrust arms without changing their ball joints, but I found that the rubber boots on the ball joints got damaged when I used the ball-joint separator on them.

The problem with the thrust arm ball joints is that the base (I call it the "cup") fits very snugly into a hole in the front spindles, and the back side of the cup is directly exposed to dirt and moisture (you can see it right underneath the CV boot). This is the ball joint that is held in by two 10mm reverse Torx bolts, by the way. The main problem is that after a few years on the road, rust builds up between the cup and the spindle and they become almost fused together. The manual says to remove them with a slide hammer, but that won't do it unless your X has very few miles and hasn't seen any inclement weather. It took me 3 hours per side just to remove these ball joints - I ended up drilling holes in the ball joints and prying them out of their cups with an air chisel. Then I had to use the air chisel to peel the remaining parts of the cup out of the spindle. PB Blaster and WD-40 didn't help at all, even soaking them overnight. I later asked the head mechanic at my dealership about it and he said that almost none of them come out with just a slide hammer. He said they typically have to heat the s*%^ out of them with a torch to get them to budge and occasionally they end up having to replace the whole spindle because it gets messed up trying to remove the ball joint. My way worked all right, but it was a lot of work and very time consuming.

So, if I was doing it again, I would change everything but the thrust arm ball joint and see if that solved the problem. If you do end up changing the thrust arm ball joint, coat the back of the new one with a healty dose of anti-sieze in case you ever need to get them back out again some day.

Good luck!!

According to BMW TIS, the tightening torque for the 2 torx bolts is 60Nm, and 80Nm for the nut, 100Nm for lower control arm to the frame side, 160Nm for the upper control arm to the frame side, all nuts for the rotor side are 80Nm.

TORQUE on the 2 small Torx bolts on E53 Ball Joint
 

Did anyone ever find out what the torque is on the 2 small torx bolts that hold the ball joint to the knuckle ?

60 Nm, like said on the previous post.

Oh Ok, Thx. I guess I must have somehow jumped in to that thread because I didnt see that answer before (?).

Also why are they called reverse threaded ? Seem to be normal - i.e clockwise tight and anticlockwise loose

They aren't reverse thread - I think the comment was in relation to the Torx head, i.e. normal Torx vs e-Torx.

Thanks Wayne