1997 Dodge Caravan with 15 Inch or 16 Inch Wheels Front Ceramic Brake Pad & Rotor Kit TRQ BKA11159

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Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

In this video, we're going to show you how to replace a front hub on this 2005 Chrysler Town & Country, same as most of the Chrysler minivans from this era, 2004-2008. A bad hub usually makes a humming sound and usually when you turn the direction of it, it quiets. If your right front hub is bad, usually on a right hand curve, you don't hear the humming as much. The tools you're going to need are a jack and jack stands; you'll need 15, 19, 21 and 32 millimeter sockets . that 32 millimeter socket's a big socket. You'll need a breaker bar or a pipe for some leverage; some penetrating oil, a hammer, the bigger the better; T45 Torx or eight millimeter Allen driver; flat blade screw driver; large C-clamp; and torque wrench. If your vehicle is a northeastern or rust belt vehicle, this can be difficult and it sometimes can be hard to get the hub out of the steering knuckle. For southern vehicles, vehicles that aren't prone to rust or corrosion, it's usually a pretty straight forward replacement.

Okay, so here I fast forwarded a little bit and I'm removing the cotter pin that holds the cover and then allows you to get to the center hub bolt. If you don't have air tools, you'll want to do this. You'll want to put the couple lug nuts back on the wheel, put the vehicle back down on the ground and then you're going to want to use a large breaker bar and a 32 millimeter socket to get that nut off. Do this at a later time once you have the brakes apart, but once you do get that nut off, you want to wrap the end of the axle with the hammer. If you give it one good hit it should break loose and once it breaks loose, you know you can get the hub off without much problem.

Okay, so if you're using just regular hand tools, then you take your wheel off the rest of the way. Again, if you're using impact tools, then it doesn't really matter. If you do see that it's hard to get your wheel off, put a couple of lug nuts back on and then hit the top or the bottom of the tire. The lug nuts help so the tire doesn't fly off when it breaks loose.

We can check the condition of our brake. You can see the rotors. You take the back of your fingernail, this surface should be smooth. On this vehicle, these are pretty deeply grooved so this rotor at the very least needs to be turned and by the look of the condition of it, we're going to replace it and if you're replacing the rotor, you're going to replace your brake pads anyways and we can look in here and you can see that that brake pad, here's the metal of the pad, the metal of the rotor and then between there is the pad and you can see it's pretty thin, so this is in need of some new brakes in the front here.

Straighten the steering wheel or turn the wheel just so you can get to the back of the cover. There are our brake calipers here, there are two bolts, one there and one down there and there's actually a T45 or proper sized Allen. The T45 Torx bit, this style, I can use a 3/8 ratchet to turn. Okay, I'll just fast forward here as I use that Torx bit and my ratchet and remove those two bolts. As the brakes wear, this is a caliper piston. That piston works its way out. What you're going to do is take a big screw driver and pry on the caliper. Just pry slowly and you can probably see that the piston is kind of working its way back in. Now there's a bracket that holds the caliper, you pry that off with a flat blade screwdriver. Now your caliper comes off and you can just pull the inner brake shoe right out. Then put your caliper, I kind of hung it on the strut. Okay, we'll put the caliper up and if we're going to do any other work, secure it with some wire tires and then you can take your outer pad off just by pulling it right out.

Next, I'll want to remove this bracket. Okay, there are two 21mm bolts here and here. You'll need a 21mm socket and I suggest a breaker bar and, if you don't have a breaker bar, you can use your ratchet, and hook a piece of pipe on to it. That gives us some extra leverage. Apply pressure nice and easy and the bolt will start to go.

Speed up here as I loosen that one up and I'll do the same thing for the lower bolt. Then I remove the pipe and just use the ratchet and take them out the rest of the way and then take that bracket right off. Your vehicle may still have these little locks on it. Pull those right off with a pair of pliers. I'm going to coat this with penetrating oil, hopefully it will let me get the disk off easier. Okay, I'll just fast forward through this a little bit. You'll see I put a couple of lug nuts onto the disk and then the bigger the hammer the better. Ours is pretty rusted on there so I just give it some strategic hits and eventually it comes off.

I'm going to show you this again real quickly. Again, if you don't have air tools, you probably already took the center hub nut off. If not, if you're working with air tools you can do it now. An alternative is that you could put the wheel back on right now, lower the vehicle to the ground and use your hand tools to take that center hub nut off. It is a 32 millimeter nut. You're going to have to remove the four bolts that hold the hub. They're 15 millimeter in there. You'll have to remove this bolt here to get the sensor out of the way and then you can remove the two bolts here on this side. Okay, what you can do with a regular 15 millimeter socket is push the axle back and get your socket on there. Okay, I'm going to speed right through, removing those two bolts. Again, they're 15 millimeter bolts and with a regular size ratchet they shouldn't be so tight that they don't come apart fairly easily. Here I'm using a 10 millimeter socket with a ratchet and extension and removing that bolt that holds the sensor in place and you pull that sensor and move it out of the way. I'll keep the fast moving action going as we remove those other two bolts that are on the back side. Okay, now it's a matter of using a hammer; the larger the better, to beat on it a little bit and then use some penetrating oil. Try and spray it in behind and I keep this up on this vehicle. It probably took me about 10 minutes of banging on the hub and it finally came free.
Use a wire brush or some sandpaper and clean out the inside of the steering knuckle.

The new part from 1A auto is just like the old hub. Grab the back of your axle, put it on there, spin the flange a little bit, push it back in to the flange and start your bolts. Ill fast forward here again, as I just get all the bolts started and then I tighten them up preliminarily with my ratchet, socket and extension. I torque the bolts to 45 foot pounds. Okay, speed it here more again as I torque the rest of the bolts and what you want to do is diagonally. So, if you do the front top one, do the rear lower one and then do the rear upper one and then the front lower one. Put the center washer back on and the hub nut back on and tighten it up primarily you need to torque it when the vehicle is back on the ground ... put the wheel back on and its back down on the ground. Put your sensor back in place and tighten that 10 millimeter bolt back up.

Here's a new rotor from 1A auto, put it on. Take your bracket. The bracket goes between the steering knuckle back here and the rotor. Okay, there's some poor shooting here, but I'm just putting that bracket in place, holding it in place, starting the bolts on and then tightening it up preliminarily. I'll also put a lug nut on to the stud just to hold things in place, make it a little easier to work. You'll want to tighten these to 120 foot pounds. Just use a pair of wire cutters, something to clip your wire tires or whatever you have holding the caliper up top.

Okay, now you'll want to actually put your old pad back in and use the large C-clamp and force the piston back in. I'm going to tighten up the C-clamp right over there. I'm going to tighten up the C-clamp. You'll see the piston go back in the rest of the way. Take it off and take the old pad out. Okay, new pad, it comes with the clips to put it right in. This one just goes right into the piston. Put the other one into your caliper bracket. Then put your caliper down on. Okay, once your disc is on there, kind of put the one side of this bracket in and then push the other side in and push the bracket down and on.

Then come around the back and push your bolts in. Let's speed up here a little bit as I just tighten up those bolts, the Allen or Torx bit and ratchet. Torque these to 30 foot pounds. Okay, now take that lug nut off and then you lift your wheel in place. Start the two lug nuts that are opposite the valve stem and then put your wheel cover on and start with the rest of the lug nuts. Now with the van on the ground, you want to torque the lug nuts to 100 foot-pounds using a star pattern as you tighten them.

Once you're done on both sides, pump the bake a bunch of times and then test stops from 5 to 10 miles an hour before road testing the vehicle.

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