Length: 41:30
Created: May 27, 2022
[0:00] What’s up guys? Today we’re going to install our Atlas Pro A-Arms on this Can-Am Commander XT. Let’s get right to it.
The first thing you’ll do is remove your front wheel and tire. As you can see, our machine is equipped with a set of GDP Portals and it already has a set of SuperATV A-arms on it. The removal and installation of our arms is going to be very similar.
[1:16] So if you have GDP Portals installed, the first thing you’ll do is remove your cotter pin and then your axle nut. I like to use side cuts. I’ll get my cotter pin as straight as I possibly can. Just try to bend it around to get it straight.
Once it’s straight, I’ll take my side cuts and use them almost as a lever. All I’m doing is biting the cotter pin right here and then wedging it off the axle nut. Then slide this out. That makes it so much easier, and you don’t destroy your cotter pin and can reuse it if you like.
Now we’ll remove our brake caliper. You’ll have two 15 mm bolts, one on top and one on the bottom. Just remove them and let your calipers sit there for a moment.
[2:27] Now we’re going to remove our brake line from the A-arm. Since we have SuperATV A-arms on, we do have threaded holes in our A-arms. We’ll let the brake caliper hang for just a second, until we can go ahead and get our hub off.
I prefer to let it hang for a moment to get the hub off, rather than laying it up here. Whenever you get to beating around or smacking on this, trying to get the hub off, it falls and really stresses the braided steel line. So it won’t hurt anything if you let it hang for just a minute.
[3:10] So if you have a factory hub, if you’re running a factory setup with no portals, you should be able to grab your hub and pull it off at this point.
With the GDP Portals, here’s the trick I like to use to get the hub off. I take one hammer and a ball pin on one side. Then take the other hammer and smack it. That’s the safest and easiest way to get your hub off. Now it will slide right off, no problem. We’ll set that aside for the time being.
At this point, for your machine, what you’ll have is just a knuckle. So you’ll have your upper ball joint connecting to it and then a lower ball joint connecting it to the knuckle. Then there’s your tie rod.
But like I said, we’re utilizing GDP Portals, so we’ll have to remove our recessed nut cap and then take our recessed nut off. Then we’ll be back up to where you are now if you’re stock.
[4:03] So we’re going to remove our recessed nut cap. Like I said, this is only necessary if your machine is equipped with GDP Portals.
Now we’ll take our 30 mm socket and remove the recessed nut. Then disconnect our tie rod.
Once your hardware is removed, slide your tie rod off to the side and just let it hang. As you can see, you can rotate it freely in order to get in here and get to your nuts easier.
The next thing we’ll do is disconnect the sway bar link and then the shock. Now remove the sway bar link from the arm. We just have an 18 mm wrench on the inside and an 18 mm socket on the outside.
Then remove your bolt. What I like to do is take my hardware, stick it back through the sway bar link, and then start your nut on it. That way you know that’s the hardware that goes back into the link when we put this thing back together.
[5:22] Now we’re going to remove the shock and take the nut off. Then grab a ratchet strap. We’re going to stretch it out here, then wrap it around the tube on the frame or anywhere that can support the weight of it. Obviously, don’t hook it to the plastic. That probably won’t work out too well for you.
Then what we’ll do is grab our steering knuckle on the portal lift up. As you can see now, this bolt will come right out. Then, instead of letting everything fall out and potentially stressing the boot on the axle, we’ll hook our strap in the eyelet on the A-arm where the shock was.
That will pull the shock out of the way and lift everything up. This will make it easier to get to the ball joints and it won’t stress any parts.
[6:13] So we have it pulled up here. And again, always put your hardware back where it goes. That way you don’t forget, and it’s easy to do.
Now our bolt is back in our shock. We’ll come down here to the lower ball joint pinch bolt. It’s a 15 mm bolt and a 15 mm nut. We’re going to remove it and let the lower arm drop out.
Remove the bolt there. Sometimes the arm will just fall right out but sometimes it won’t. If it doesn’t, just take a rubber mallet and smack the A-arm off the knuckle. That’s perfectly fine, we don’t damage the arm. And even if you do, it’s just your stock arm.
[7:20] Now we’ll remove our sway bar link from the driver’s side of the machine. Use an 18 mm wrench and 18 mm socket to remove the hardware. Then flip that up out of the way. Pop the hardware back through our link.
Then we’ll go to the passenger side. The reason we have both sway bar links disconnected from our arms right now is because we need to lift the upper arm as high as we can in order to get our axle out of our knuckle, or the portal in this case.
With it being disconnected from both sides, you can pick the sway bar link up or the sway bar itself. Move it all the way up out of your way without doing that. It’ll pull the tension on the opposite side to where you’ll try to ratchet strap and pick up the hole at the opposite side.
Now that it’s disconnected, we can take our ratchet strap and crank it as high as we can get it. Just hold your shock up out of the way.
[8:33] So we’ll take this up as high as it’s going to let us go on the ratchet strap. We’re actually getting a little hung up inside the portal, so what you can do is just take a socket and give it a couple taps. That’ll free it up. Then we’ll pull it straight out, just like this.
One thing you don’t want to do is let the axle hang like this. That will crease the boot and then, over time, that boot is going to have an issue where it could potentially leak. It’s going to prematurely wear the boot.
So always lay it on a tie rod, or even if you use a bungee cord or something and tie it up out of the way. That’s perfectly acceptable too. You just do not want to let that axle hang.
[9:30] At this point, we’ll flip our knuckle around so it’s facing out and away, the opposite way that it normally would. We’re going to remove our cotter pin for the upper ball joint.
Then, once the cotter pin is removed, we’ll shove an extension through the lower ball joint hole in order to get a socket on this instead of trying to crack it loose with a wrench.
I’m going to remove our cotter pin. Sometimes these can be a bit of a bear just because they’re so small. I usually end up breaking them by pulling them apart. Usually, when you pull these smaller cotter pins out, you mangle them up. If that happens, definitely replace it.
[10:10] Now we’ll take our long extension and slide it through the lower ball joint hole. We’ll put our 19 mm socket on it then run it up here.
I like to run this nut down. I don’t take it all the way off because in this next step, if it’s off, you’re probably going to have a knuckle falling on the floor.
So with that nut still threaded onto the threads, we’ll take a hammer and lay it on there like this. Then take another hammer and smack it. As you can see, after a couple good whacks, it separates the ball joint from your knuckle. Then you can remove your nut completely. Then remove your hub or port.
Now we’re going to remove our upper arm. We’ll have two 18 mm bolts on both of the tabs. Come right here with our 18 mm socket and 18 mm wrench.
[12:03] We removed the nut, and now we’re going to remove both of our bolts. I’m going to pick up and wiggle on our A-arms. Sometimes this bolt right here will not come out because it will be hitting the inner ball and socket. What you’ll have to do is turn the steering wheel.
In this case, we’re going to grab the wheel on the opposite side and rotate it so the tie rod is extended all the way out. Now our tie rod is all the way out and our bolt will slide right out.
Once your bolt’s removed, wiggle your arm and remove it from the machine. Then we’ll remove our lower arm hardware.
[13:21] Once your nuts are removed, wiggle your arms around and remove them.
We’re about to install the ball joints but before we do, we wanted to go ahead and show you what kind of tools we’re using to press these ball joints into these arms. I’m going to give you some measurements.
Across this is 45 mm. Outside, as you can see, we’ve kind of beveled the edge of this a little bit. We took our burr bit and ground it down a little bit. We also put it in the vice and squeezed it a little bit. That way it fits in the arm nicely.
This is what we’ll press our upper ball joint in with. The outside diameter is 39 or 38 mm. Essentially, it’s an inch and a half piece of tubing. We went ahead and tack welded a plate on top. You could use whatever to lay it on top of the press.
Then we use a 21 mm socket. You could get this from your local hardware store and make it. Or if you had a nice ball joint press set, you may have something that would work for you.
[14:30] So let’s get over here and install these ball joints. At this point you should have your arm removed from your machine. One thing you can do is press out your stock ball joints and press it into your new SuperATV arms. Or you could have upgraded and gone with the variety ball joints that SuperATV has to offer.
This arm already has a SuperATV ball joint in it. What we’ll do is press it out and press it into our new arms. We’ll remove our snap ring and set it aside. Then we’ll take our A-arm, find a piece of tubing that fits around our ball joint so we can press it through, and set it up on the press.
Line it up so it’s sitting flat and take a 24 mm socket or 21 mm socket and just press the joint out.
Press it out of the arm. There’s your ball joint.
[16:01] Now we’ll press our ball joints into our new arms. After we press these in, we’ll take some measurements and tell you exactly what we used here to press in this ball joint. The biggest thing is you want to make sure it goes in straight.
If you have a mechanical press that’s on a lever, you want to make sure it goes in nice and easy. If it’s hydraulic, you want to be careful that it doesn’t go encrypted.
As you can see, that ball joint went in nice and easy. It didn’t bind up and it didn’t pop. So when you’re done, your ball joint stud should still move freely. If it doesn’t, that means you put the ball joint in crooked and it’s in a bind.
[16:48] So now that our ball joint is pressed in, we’ll take our snap ring and a pair of snap ring pliers. Open it up and slide it down. Then, I like to take a screwdriver and just tap it. Tap the snap ring down.
Look in here and make sure you have full engagement. We do, so we’re good to go here.
Now we’ll take our upper A-arm. Go ahead and remove the snap ring from it. Set it aside. Again, you can upgrade to a SuperATV ball joint. We do sell them on the website. I do recommend upgrading.
[17:37] As you can see, with our press setup here, we’re just using whatever works. We’ve got a wheel bearing that we’re pressing against and then, on top, we’ll use the same socket that we used to press the ball joint in on the lower arm.
Once your ball joint is out, grab it. As you can see, this one’s pretty rusty. A little Scotch-Brite will get it cleaned up before you reinstall it.
Now we’ll spray a little WD-40 on this, or anything that can penetrate the rust on it. Let’s go through and clean it up. Like I’ve said multiple times, at this point, I highly recommend upgrading to a SuperATV ball joint. But these arms are compatible with stock as well.
As you can see, it wasn’t too rusty. It just had a bit of surface rust on it from being in the water, which is no big deal. The ball joint still functions just fine.
[18:56] One thing to keep in mind as well is if you do upgrade to a SuperATV ball joint, these are completely adjustable. All you’d have to do is remove your pin right here or your ring. Line it up with your pin, pop the pin out, and then you can tighten the center section of the ball joint.
You can completely take it apart and clean it up real good. Reinstall it and it’s just like putting a brand-new ball joint in your A-arm.
Now we’ll take our upper arm and get something that fits over our ball joint, and something that allows our ball joint to press in on the bottom. We’ll press it right in.
[19:58] Now what our ball joint is installed, we’ll head over to the bench and install our boot as well as our snap ring.
Now we’ll install the bushings that came in the kit. It’s very easy to do. Just remove the bushings from the packaging and pop them into the A-arms, installing them by hand. Slide your sleeve into the bushing like so.
We’ll repeat this for all four of our pivot tubes.
Now we’re going to install our grease zerks on the lower A-arm with the pivot block. You’ll run the straight grease circuit and thread it right in, just like that. Take a socket and tighten it all the way up. Then, for your upper A-arms, you have a threaded spot in the arm. This is where the 90-degree zerks will go.
[22:37] We’re going to install our lower A-arm and put it back where your stock was removed, using the stock hardware. Let’s go ahead and put our nuts on.
It’s very important to get these arm bolts as tight as you can get them. I like to make sure I tighten it from the nut side. Like I said, crank them down and get them as tight as you can get them.
Now we’re going to install our upper A-arm. Just make sure you have the brake line on top of the arm when you install it, like so.
[24:19] Once your bolts are in, install your nuts. Then we can fully tighten our upper arm hardware.
Now we’re going to make sure our brake lines laying over this way. Go ahead and grab your knuckle, but again, in our case, since we’re running portals, we’ll grab our backing plate and portal.
Then start the hardware back onto our upper ball joint. For the time being, go ahead and hook your ratchet strap into your A-arm. That will hold it up for you, just like this.
We’re going to take our 19, the same way we loosened our hardware here. Slide it through and fully tighten it, making sure you get it nice and tight. Then we’ll install a new cotter pin.
[27:00] Once the cotter pin is installed, nice and tight, we’ll reinstall our axle. Get the axle back into the portal, in our case. Just put your knuckle onto your upper A-arm. Fully tighten it and then slide your axle through.
At this point, all you’d have to do is hook your lower A-arm, which we’ll go ahead and do. Grab your lower A-arm and line it up with your ball joint hole in the lower arm. Then just wiggle it and get it to a point where it’s not going to move anymore.
Then take your rubber mallet and tap the ball joint in until the notch on the ball joint lines up perfectly, where your bolt will go right through. You should never beat the bolt through. Never take an impact and run the bolt through. That bolt should fit freely.
Otherwise, you’ll tear the threads up and you’ll end up having to buy a new pinch bolt for your lower ball joint.
[28:22] Now we’ll fully tighten our lower ball joint pinch bolt. Get it nice and tight. The next thing we’ll do is take our recessed nut. Again, if you don’t have portals, you don’t need to worry about this. Reinstall it. Get it nice and tight, then take the recessed nut cap. Start your hardware through it and line it up with your threaded holes on the portal.
I usually run those in with an impact and then come back through with a ratchet, just to check them. You don’t want to over-tighten them. Just snug them up a little bit so they don’t back out.
Now let’s get our tie rod lined up and get our hole and steering wall lined up. Reinstall the hardware. We want to fully tighten that and install the cotter pin. Get the cotter pin installed and bend it around the bolt.
We’ll straighten everything back out here and pull the knuckle out. Then lift the tension up off our ratchet strap. Take the strap, get our shock and bolt off, and drop it back into the arm.
[30:54] Pop the hardware back through. We can go ahead and remove the ratchet strap from the machine. Fully tighten our shock hardware. Get it nice and tight.
Next, we’ll install our hub rotor assembly. Just install your factory hub. If you didn’t have portals, just take the brake caliper and put it back on the rotor. I like to start the hardware before we start our castle nut up.
Now we’re going to install our nut. You would install your axle nut. Make sure you get this tightened to at least 300 foot-pounds on the portals. If you’re running your factory hub, make sure you follow your manufacturer’s torque specs.
Once your cotter key is lined up, we’ll install the cotter pin. Give it a couple wiggles to make sure it gets all the way down in there. Do the same thing on this side to kind of draw the cotter pin in and bend it up, like that.
[33:17] Now repeat the same steps for the opposite side. Once you’ve completed the opposite side, be sure to hook up your sway bar links for the passenger as well as the driver’s side. We’ve already completed ours, so we’ll hook our swivel links back up.
Now we’re going to fully tighten our sway bar link hardware. Then reinstall our wheels and tires.
Once you’ve reinstalled your wheels and tires and everything is fully tightened, sit your machine on the ground. We’re going to roll it out by moving it back and forth about five times. Then we’ll check our camber to see if we need to make any camber adjustments.
[35:25] That’s one awesome feature about SuperATV’s Atlas Pro A-Arms, is that they are fully adjustable so you can dial in your camber a little bit. We’ll be able to shorten our arms up, get our tires standing back out, or straighten it for positive. We’ll also be able to lengthen our arms a little bit.
So we’ll get down, roll it out, and check the camber. Now we’ll fire the machine up and move it back and forth about five times, just to let the suspension settle. We’ll turn the wheel all the way, both ways, just to make sure our suspension is sitting at its lowest point.
[36:48] Once you’ve done that, be sure to put your machine back in park. That way the machine won’t roll around while you’re working on it. Come over here, and I have a special tool I use to check camber.
One important thing about checking camber is making sure your tire pressures are exactly where you want them to be before you hit the trail. So I’m going to set these at 15 psi. That’s typically where I run them. That gives you a bit of leeway if you’re on the trail, so drop them down.
So we’ll put 15 pounds of air in all our tires. Right there, that’s perfect on 15. I’m just that good, guys.
Alright, now we’ll check the camber. The first thing to do when checking camber is to obviously zero out your angle finder. I like to use a digital one. It has a nice digital readout on it, which makes it a little easier. It also has a magnet on the bottom of it.
What I’ll do is turn it on. I know this is perfectly flat here, so we’ll click zero. You can zero it twice. Then lay it over and touch the tire. We’re looking for anything between 0 and negative 2 degrees.
[38:11] We have a negative 1.4 readout on our angle finder. That’s within that zero degree to negative two degree range that we want to be in. We never want to be positive.
You could adjust it to zero, or you could adjust it to two. It’s honestly 100% up to you and how you want to set your machine up. These arms are fully adjustable, like I said, so it’s very easy to do.
Just a rule of thumb on these pivot blocks, every two complete rotations, or two 360-degree rotations, will be one degree. So if you rotate the pivot blocks in two 360-degree rotations, that will bring your tire out one degree.
If you rotate your pivot blocks out, or unscrew them two 360-degree rotations, that will lengthen the lower A-arm and bring the top of the tire in. That will make your tire go negative, so you’ll have negative camber. If you shorten the A-arm it’ll give you positive camber. So keep that in mind.
[39:12] This setup we’re using is essentially a piece we burn out on our laser. It’s completely straight and it works great. I usually take my foot and butt it up to the bottom of the tire, as tight as I can. Then rock it in and jot down whatever degree I have. That way I can translate that into my adjustment on the heavy blocks.
Like I said, everything is good to go here. We’re going to leave it at 1.4. That will be perfectly fine for what we use this machine for.
The last thing we’ll do is make sure we tighten our jam nuts on the pivot blocks. I never do that before we make sure the camber is correct. Now that we know it’s correct, we’ll fully tighten them. Just use a big 18-inch adjustable wrench.
When tightening these jam nuts on your favorite blocks, make sure you get them as tight as you can possibly get them. You won’t break them or over-tighten them. But if they do come loose, that will damage the threads inside the A-arm and you’ll never be able to get them tight again. So make sure you get them good and tight.
[40:08] This is always something I check when I go out riding. I always keep an adjustable wrench with me and just tighten these bad boys up as tight as you can get them. Like I said, we’ll put as much force as we possibly can on them. It’s well worth it.
As you can see there, it’s lifting the whole machine up, getting them so tight. That’s what you want to do as well.
So now both of the jam nuts are tightened on your pivot blocks. Go ahead and put a couple pumps of grease in your ball joints and all of your A-arm bushings. That’s what we installed those zerks for.
[41:06] Once you’ve done that, that’s all there is to installing SuperATV’s Atlas Pro 1.5” Forward High-Clearance A-Arms on this Commander XT 1000. Be sure to check us out online to pick yours up today. Don’t forget to drop a like, comment, and subscribe. Thanks for watching and we’ll catch you on the next one.
