What is a Control Arm?

What is a control arm? Welcome to Mercie J auto care, where compassion and craftmanship come together. I'm Rick Smith, master certified technician. Now you have to realize, when we’re driving down the road, our wheels need to be able to go up and down. Our front wheel need to turn. All of this movement needs to take place for a smooth ride. So imagine my two arms are control arms and this right here would connect in this case, to the bottom of the wheel. Some cars could have one at the bottom and one at the top. So if I fly like a chicken wing, that means the wheels can go up and down, right? So here’s a control arm. On the body side, not the road side, but the body side we have bushings. These bushings can get torn or wear and when they do that we might get a clunk when we're braking or accelerating. Or we could be wearing tires prematurely because the alignment will be out. Out here we have a ball joint and that joint is what allows things to move around, turn, go up and down, twist. When these wear, sometimes we can get basically a wobble after we go over bumps or speed bumps in the road. Like I said, it depends on the suspension design, every vehicle is different. So we may just have a lower control arms and some cars we might have a lower and an upper control arm. Some vehicles are even more complex than that and they have a MultiLink suspensions. I hope that this helps you understand what a control arm is until next time, safe travels and blessings to you. If you would like your automotive question answered in our next video, comment below!