Hello everyone,

Apologies for the data dump, I felt it was best to give you guys as much info as possible before I ask my questions.

I've recently purchased a 2000 LT 4WD for my daughter to drive when she starts college in the fall. It's in decent shape with low miles (124k), although it spent the first four years of its life in Massachusetts, so there is definitely more underbody rust than I would expect to see on most cars in Colorado. I built a punch list of items that needed to be fixed, which led to more items that needed to be fixed, which led to some items that I just wanted to fix while I was in the process...I'm sure you know how that goes.

At any rate, as part of my tasks I am replacing all four control arms. The amount of rust and scaling on them is bugging me, even though they feel reasonably solid underneath. Also, I was planning on doing new bushings anyways, and it looks like the bushing shells are rusted in, not to mention whoever pressed in the last set on both of the upper arms didn't use a spacer between the flanges, so they are bent. I am getting ready to remove the lowers and found a ton of great threads on these forums, plus some videos on YouTube, that have given me advice on the procedure and what to expect. I've also got the AllData DIY online manual for my vehicle, which helps a lot. Even with all this good info, however, I am left with an issue.

The truck is up on four stands, wheels off. I started working on the passenger side first, taking off the brake calipers, ABS sensor mounts, and so forth; and then separating the upper ball joint from the knuckle after putting a jack under the lower control arm. With the ball joint removed, I took out the shock and removed the upper control arm, no sweat. At that point, referring to some of the instructions I found on other forums, I released the preload on the torsion bar. The problem is, the instructions I was following made no mention of using a torsion bar tool, they just backed out the adjusting bolt, which is what I did. There was some tension on it for sure, but nothing huge and it backed right out with a ratchet. After a few turns I could back it out the rest of the way using just my fingers (I didn't remove it completely).

I then moved on to separating the lower ball joint from the knuckle, pushing the axle back through the hub assembly, and rotating the knuckle out and away (tie rod is still attached). So, at this point the lower control arm is attached by its mounts, and is also still connected to the sway bar and torsion bar (the sway bar is coming off next, pending some answers to my questions below). The jack is still under the arm, although the arm is just resting on it, there is no significant pressure.

Finally, my questions:

1. Why didn't I need the torsion bar tool to remove the preload? Is it because I put the truck up on stands and had everything hanging down/pulled off?

2. Does this have any repercussions for when I put things back together with the new control arm? If I just reverse the order of uninstall, will I be able to put the torsion bar preload back in with just the adjusting bolt? Or will I need to use the torsion bar tool?


I have spent a lot of time searching and poring through posts related to control arms and/or torsion bars on these forums, and although some of them dance around this issue, none of them directly address it that I've been able to find. I also haven't been able to find a video of somebody removing an LCA on a Blazer or Jimmy of the same era as mine; that would probably help me a lot if somebody knows of one that I haven't found.

Any help is greatly appreciated!