natsoj2
LVC Member
I finally rebuilt the front end of my 2002 Lincoln LSE, manual, 3.0, 155,000 miles (California car for all but it's first year of existence, which made everything much easier). I started with the driver side and it took me parts of 3 days (not continuously though). I wasn't doing it at my house so I'm guessing 9 or 10 hours total on the driver's side. There was a learning curve involved. Most of the time taken was attempting to press the ball joint in and out of the knuckle, and getting off the inside tie rod end. Lot's of soul searching involved. After figuring things out on the driver's side, the passenger side only took about 3 hours to complete (not counting letting the ball joint bath in some PB Blaster overnight. I think if I had to do it over again (minus any issues with pressing the ball joints or stuck inner tie rods) I could do both sides in 6 to 7 hours.
I tried to buy the best possible parts I could, so here's the list.
Upper control arms -- Lemforder
Lower control arms -- Motorcraft
Inner Tie rods ends -- Motorcraft
Outer Tie rod ends -- Motorcraft
Knuckle Ball Joints -- Moog
Stabilizer Links -- Mevotech (not a lot of choices here at least from Rock Auto)
My only regret was that I didn't mic the ball joint correctly @ 16mm (wheel turned all the way, tire still on, reaching around with the mic) and bought 14mm ball joints and 14mm lower control arms. When removing the first one I realized they were actually 16mm. Darn. I'm not very worried about it to be honest since I replaced both control arms and ball joints. Also, I wouldn't have found 16mm Motorcraft control arms and would have had to get something else.
Issues............ pressing the ball joints in and out was the biggest problem I encountered and some of it was my fault. Initially I was trying to use an impact wrench and just holding on to the knuckle. This wasted A LOT of time. Driving home one evening (I was using my sister's huge garage so I wouldn't have to do it on my rainy slanted driveway) I realized I needed to hold the knuckle better because I wasn't getting the benefit of the impact wrench. I bought a vice and after a lot of PB Blaster, and securing the knuckle, the ball joint pressed out rather quickly. Pressing the new one in was fairly uneventful.
The inner tie rod end on the driver side was very very hard to get off. Using a tie rod tool from O'Reilly's it would not break lose and the "wrench part" that fit the tie rod the best would flex and turn off of the tie rod. After a lot of wasted time, and heating up the tie rod end many times, I got it to break loose when I used the "wrench part" that was just slightly too tight to fit over the tie rod. It fit down over the tie rod but only about a quarter of an inch. I used a persuader to get it two thirds of the way on to the tie rod. It finally broke loose and I'm not sure if it was from the heat or the non-flexing fitting in the tie rod tool. Probably both. The passenger side broke off easily with the latter method.
Getting to the upper control arm bolts on the driver side was challenging at first but in the end was not that bad. After starting to take off the master cylinder, and deciding not to do it, I took out the Degas bottle (just removed the two bolts, pulled off the hose near the firewall and lifted it out of it's hole, this might be different for the V8) and it was very easy to get to the bolt.
All of the lessons learned from the first side made the passenger side go very quickly.
After changing everything, it was way out of alignment despite my efforts to put things back to where I had found them. The tires were opposing each other so much that it was undriveable and I had it towed to get an alignment. Probably smart to do that in any case.
The result after driving about 30 miles last night is that it drives and handles very very nicely. I can tell a big difference in how smooth it is. I didn't change out the shocks/struts because of the very few good choices out there, but to be honest it doesn't seem like I need them at this point. I'm excited to look for parts for the rear end and to do the backend eventually too.
I tried to buy the best possible parts I could, so here's the list.
Upper control arms -- Lemforder
Lower control arms -- Motorcraft
Inner Tie rods ends -- Motorcraft
Outer Tie rod ends -- Motorcraft
Knuckle Ball Joints -- Moog
Stabilizer Links -- Mevotech (not a lot of choices here at least from Rock Auto)
My only regret was that I didn't mic the ball joint correctly @ 16mm (wheel turned all the way, tire still on, reaching around with the mic) and bought 14mm ball joints and 14mm lower control arms. When removing the first one I realized they were actually 16mm. Darn. I'm not very worried about it to be honest since I replaced both control arms and ball joints. Also, I wouldn't have found 16mm Motorcraft control arms and would have had to get something else.
Issues............ pressing the ball joints in and out was the biggest problem I encountered and some of it was my fault. Initially I was trying to use an impact wrench and just holding on to the knuckle. This wasted A LOT of time. Driving home one evening (I was using my sister's huge garage so I wouldn't have to do it on my rainy slanted driveway) I realized I needed to hold the knuckle better because I wasn't getting the benefit of the impact wrench. I bought a vice and after a lot of PB Blaster, and securing the knuckle, the ball joint pressed out rather quickly. Pressing the new one in was fairly uneventful.
The inner tie rod end on the driver side was very very hard to get off. Using a tie rod tool from O'Reilly's it would not break lose and the "wrench part" that fit the tie rod the best would flex and turn off of the tie rod. After a lot of wasted time, and heating up the tie rod end many times, I got it to break loose when I used the "wrench part" that was just slightly too tight to fit over the tie rod. It fit down over the tie rod but only about a quarter of an inch. I used a persuader to get it two thirds of the way on to the tie rod. It finally broke loose and I'm not sure if it was from the heat or the non-flexing fitting in the tie rod tool. Probably both. The passenger side broke off easily with the latter method.
Getting to the upper control arm bolts on the driver side was challenging at first but in the end was not that bad. After starting to take off the master cylinder, and deciding not to do it, I took out the Degas bottle (just removed the two bolts, pulled off the hose near the firewall and lifted it out of it's hole, this might be different for the V8) and it was very easy to get to the bolt.
All of the lessons learned from the first side made the passenger side go very quickly.
After changing everything, it was way out of alignment despite my efforts to put things back to where I had found them. The tires were opposing each other so much that it was undriveable and I had it towed to get an alignment. Probably smart to do that in any case.
The result after driving about 30 miles last night is that it drives and handles very very nicely. I can tell a big difference in how smooth it is. I didn't change out the shocks/struts because of the very few good choices out there, but to be honest it doesn't seem like I need them at this point. I'm excited to look for parts for the rear end and to do the backend eventually too.
Last edited:
