BMR Rear Upper Control Arm Mount 2011-2014

Drag racing is all about traction. That first 60 feet is going to make or break your pass. Unfortunately, there's not one magical part that's going to create traction. It's going to be a mixture of well chosen parts that work well to get that 60 foot down. You know this Yellow Blaze GT behind me regularly drag races his car, has gotten well into the 11's with very basic bolt ons so far. Traction wise he has a set of drag radials on there and a set of BMR lower control arms. Now, he's looking at taking traction to the next level to improve his 60 foots. Today, we're going to install this BMR adjustable upper with a matching mount.

Starting in 2005, the Mustang went to a single upper control arm set up which basically had three link with a pan hard bar. The control arm now is only going to control axle counter-rotation and correct the pinion angle. The problem is when you start drag racing, it puts a lot of strain on these parts, and the factory stamped steel ones just don't hold up real well. We're going to install these BMR pieces, which are going to be much beefier than our factory pieces. Starting with the bracket, instead of a stamped steel bracket, about 1/4" thick steel welded piece, is going to be a lot stronger than the factory one.

The actual arm itself, uses a heavy duty polyurethane bushing and 1-5/8th DOM tubing which again is much stronger than the factory. It also has an 1-1/8th adjuster in a middle which is the largest in the industry. This is going to take a lot of abuse on this car, without any kind of issues. This mount and this arm here are going to fit your 2011-2014 Mustang.

For this installation, we'll need a lift and a pole jack or a jack and jack stands, 1/2" ratchet or a 1/2" impact gun, 18 mm socket, 21 mm socket, 24 mm socket, 27 mm socket, at least a 10-12" extension, torque wrench, hammer, small punch, channel locks, protractor and a grease gun.

Oddly enough the installation for the control arm and the mounts are going to start inside your interior. One bolt for the mount is underneath the back seat, so the first step is to remove the back seat to access that bolt. To remove the back seat there's two push pin clips you've got to find. Basically, go straight up from the foot well, there's a little piece of plastic. Push it in and lift. The bolt we're removing is going to be this large one right here in the center. You can do this with hand tools. Power tools make it a lot easier. Remove the bolt, then we can move under the car. Now we're under the car, the first thing we're going to do is remove the nut and bolt here that hold the control arm to the actual housing itself.

Once they're separated, then we can remove the rest of the bracket. We can actually remove the bracket and the arm as one piece. Now you're going to knock the bolt out here. There's probably going to be some tension on it though. The way to get rid of that is to lightly lift up on the front of the rear end assembly. That'll take the tension off. Using a long extension now and get the remaining two bolts. Remove the bracket and factory arm. Looking at both of them on the table here, you can see how important using a high quality piece like the BMR is. Look at the construction. Like I said, stamped steel, very thin, 1/4" thick MIG welded. This piece is going to take a lot of abuse at the drag strip.

You definitely want to put a good quality piece like the BMR in place. Now we're going to separate the factory arm from the factory mounts, so I can properly measure it out to install our BMR. You get the BMR arm, the same length as your stock arm. Yes, it's adjustable. Yes, we can adjust it on the car. You don't want to make any adjustments now. You want to start with stock length. I've found one of the best ways to do is to take the 1/2" extension we used earlier, put that through this end here. We'll get them pretty straight and use the factory bolt. See how well that lines up. It's a little bit off.

There we go. Now that's good. We can tighten down the lock nuts. To tighten down the lock nut, more than likely you're not going to have a wrench that large. If you have a large adjustable wrench, or a set of lock jaws like this, they can do the job of tightening it down. Be careful not to damage it. Now we can finish assembly on the table. Now to assemble the upper control arm with the bracket, start by putting some grease on the outside here. You can see here, you've got two choices for holes, which basically is going to adjust instant center on a car. The adjustment is going to be based on what you have done to your car. Your lower, which is lowered in the back, pretty much you're always going to use the upper hole. To lower it if you have relocation brackets, anything like that, upper hole.

Basically if you have a bone stock car, or a more road race set up, you'll probably want to use the bottom hole. Now we can tighten it down. The torque spec on this is 200 foot pounds, so you want to make sure you get it plenty tight. When you're torqueing to 200 foot pound, you're going to need some help for sure. You can also try doing it on the car, it might be easier, but if you're doing it on a table like this, you will need some help holding everything to get it tight. We can put our new BMR assembly up into place. We can probably use both arms, kind of hold it up into place. Mount up the front hole, and put some Loctite on the factory bolts and re-install it.

Hold the arm in place and then tighten it down. Now we're going to torque them down to 85 foot pounds. Now we're going to connect the arm itself to our rear. We may actually have to lift that up to get it to line up. Put a little Loctite on the bolt and re-install the factory nut. We're going to tighten it down. Now we'll tighten this bolt to 129 foot pound. You might want to put four or five pumps of grease in here. You don't want to overdo it. We'll move to the interior and install the last bolt. We're going to apply a little bit of Loctite to the bolt before we install it. Get it tight and then we'll torque it down.

The torque spec for the rear bolt is going to be 240 foot pounds. Pop it into place and your insulation is finished. Now we're going to measure the pinion angle and show you how to do that. One of the benefits of having adjustable control arms, you can adjust the pinion angle and actual improve it, which will increase traction. We're actually not going to make the adjustment. It's going to require removing the control arm, possibly multiple times. Which is going to be really boring to watch. We're going to show you how to measure it and fix it. You're simply going to pull the control arm and then turn it to adjust.

To measure the pinion angle, you'll need a protractor. What you're going to do, take a measurement and make sure you're on a flat part on the rear of the drive shaft. There's the angle in our case, -5. The next place you want to do is take a measurement right here on the pinion yoke. Make sure you're flat there again. Okay, in our case, that's -3. What you're going to do is subtract the reading here from your reading here and get the numbers. We have -5, -3. You subtract them, it works out to -2, which is our pinion angle. -2 is actually pretty good for a stick car. Using -2 to -3 for a stick car, -1 to -2 for an automatic car are going to be good places to start.

In our case we don't really need any more adjustments and we're good to go. The BMR adjustable upper control arm and the mount is an excellent choice for any car looking for traction, but especially if you're into drag racing. These are also two parts you want to do together. Replacing the control arm and leaving a stock mount makes no sense at all. You still have a weak link. Both pieces together you're going to make the ride a lot stronger. It allows a much better pinion angle and hopefully some better 60 foot times. This is a little tough because the torque is kind of hard to get too. Figure no more than about two hours. You'll be back on the road in no time.