How to Replace Wheel Hub Bearing Assembly 2003-09 Toyota 4Runner

Hey friends. It's Len here from 1A Auto. Today, we're going to be working on our 2006 Toyota 4Runner, and I want to show you how to remove and install a front hub bearing assembly. If you need this or any other part, check us out, 1aauto.com. Thanks.

Okay, friends. It's time to remove our wheel. To do that, you're going to remove all of your lug nuts. Going to use a 21 millimeter socket. If you're going to be using a ratchet, it might be easier to do this while the wheel's still on the ground so it can't spin while you try to loosen up your lug nuts. I'm using an air gun, so I've got my eye protection, my hand protection. Here we go.

This one, I'm going to leave on a few threads. Now I have a spare hand. Try to wiggle this around. A lot of times on Toyotas, they don't want to break free right away. That's not really that big of a deal. You could use something as simple as a rubber mallet, or if you have a pry bar. Either way, what you want to do is make sure you have a lug nut on, at least a couple threads, but it's still nice and loose.

Come right under here. I'm going to bonk right on the edge of the rim. If you're using a real hammer, that's not a rubber mallet, definitely don't hit your rim. You'll mar it up, cause issues. You could try bonking on the tire. You just have to be careful, because when you bonk, it's going to want to come back. Rubber mallet right on the rim.

There we are. That lug nut did its job, made it so the wheel didn't come falling off and hurt anybody. That's super important. Safety's number one. We'll take our wheel off. We'll roll it out of the way.

All right. We're going to take out this clip right here. Just a little forky looking clip, does this. It goes right over the line. Can use a screwdriver, a small pry bar, some cutters if that's easier for you to grab with or even pliers. Once you get it, so it wants to break free, should be able to wiggle it right out of there. That's what it looks like. It's got a little ear here, that ear faces towards you, or away from the vehicle.

Okay. Now it's time to take out these caliper slider pins here. Sometimes there'll be frozen in there, if your caliper's old, and that's pretty common. Basically, what you need to do is grab like this, your small pocket screwdriver, you're going to take off this clip right here. Do the same thing to the other one, pull off that clip. It's the same as the first. You don't have to worry about mixing them up. Awesome.

Now, what you would need to do, just take your small hammer, give these a couple bonks. These ones come out nice and easy because it's a brand new caliper, but if it wasn't, and they didn't come out easy, you just use your hammer, bonk, bonk, bonk, until it's level. Take your punch, drive these all the way through as far as you can, and then come from this side and pull your pin all the way out. You'd want to inspect your pins, make sure that they're not rotted or rusted or anything like that. If they are, you'd want to replace them, so they look something like this, nice and smooth. Because your pad needs to be able to slide around on them nice and easily.

We'll set those aside. We've got a little clip up here. This comes out very easily. Just got a little ear right there, and it slides into the hole on the pad. Then same thing over here. At this point, if this wasn't a brand new caliper, your pistons are going to be holding your pads probably up against your rotor. We'll go with the assumption that they are. You would take your small pry bar, just come right between the rotor and the pad, and just try to push like this. That's going to slowly push in this piston. Same right here, over here and over there. Once you have it so your pistons are pushed back, and your pads are plenty distance away from your rotor, you can grab your pad, slide it right out of there.

We'll set that aside for recycling. This one. Now you're going to want to make sure you have maybe something like this, or even a small bungee cord, whatever you need, because we're going to be taking out the two mounting bolts that hold this caliper to the knuckle, and we're going to have to hang this somewhere. Just get it ready. Wherever you think you can probably put it. We're going to take out those two bolts, and we can continue.

Now, I'm going to use a 17 millimeter socket. This one's just a swivel, and it's on my impact wrench. That's just so when I come in, I can get the right angle. You can use a 17 millimeter socket and a long ratchet if that's easier for you. Of course, if you're using your air gun, you want to make sure you're wearing safety glasses at all times.

Got both of our bolts. Set these aside. Just grab this, bring it down here. Should be able to move around fairly decently. Just going to put that there. There's no pressure on this flex hose. You definitely don't want to put a tug on your flex hose. When you're trying to take the rotor off, you'd want to have a lug nut on there, at least a few good threads, and then when you're taking your hammer, and you're going bonk, bonk, bonk to try and get this to break free, if the rotor did decide to pop off, it can't come down and potentially hurt you anywhere. This rotor's already broken free. Here's our rotor.

Okay friends. We've got a little punch. We've got our hammer, you've got your cover. All we're going to do is just make a little divot in the cover, just like that, and now I'm going to try to drive the cover off. All right. As you can tell, I did not make a hole inside the cover there, the tin cover. If I did make a hole, I would just have to seal it up. All right. The reason why I had to make that, is just so I had something to grab onto, so I can knock the cover out.

Now, we have a clear view of where our axle comes through the wheel bearing, and then all the rest of the stuff we're going to have to take off to get that axle out. Now, I'm just going to use pair of cutters. You can grab these ears. You can either bend them up and cut them off. I wouldn't cut them unless you have a brand new cotter pin, because you can't put this back together without a cotter pin. If for some reason you don't have access to another cotter pin, just straighten out these ears the best you can, then you should be able to get the cotter pin out.

All right. We do have access to cotter pins, but I'm just doing it this way, just to show you what I'm talking about, about trying to straighten this stuff out. Of course, it'll straighten out more along the way as we do this. At this point, I would say that it's fairly reusable. It's not broken in any way. I didn't try to cut into it very much. I just gripped in. Like I said, I'm going to replace it because we have access to new ones, but you definitely need to have one of these to lock this in.

All right. We're going to use our 36 millimeter socket. I'm going to use my air gun, and I'm going to take this off. If you're not using an air gun, and you're just using a socket with a ratchet, when you go to turn it to the left to loosen, this is just going to spin. That causes an issue. What you can do, grab yourself a pry bar, put it like this, going across your lug studs, and then bring it down close to the ground, so that this is all right down on the ground. As you go to loosen, it's going to bring the pry bar around, rest this on the ground, and it's going to hold the bearing from spinning around on you, and you'll be able to remove the nut.

For me personally, I don't need this because I have this. I have my eye protection on, my hand protection of course. Here we go. Take that nut off of there. I'm going to put it with the rest of the stuff. Grab this, see if we can push it through. Okay. I cannot push this through. This is going to need to come out of the bearing when we take the bearing off.

What we're going to do now, right in the center here, you can see there's a little pilot hole. You can either use a punch with a hammer, bonk, bonk, bonk, try to drive this through, or you can use your little air chisel with a punch that goes in the center. What you need to make sure that you don't do, use your hammer, give it a couple bonks. If you peen over the threads on your axle, the axle is going to be unusable. You'll have to try to file it down. Hopefully you can get it going good. It's kind of a pain in the butt. Maybe you might even need to replace the whole axle, and that will be fairly expensive.

If you do do something like that, you need to replace the axle, check out the video. We'll do one on that as well. I'm going to grab a punch, and I'll show you what I'm talking about.

Okay. I'm just going to use my air chisel, with my little punch bit. I got my eye protection on. Here we go. I can see the axle driving its way in. This comes in handy. You can get yourself an air chisel if you want, right off 1aauto.com. Going to grab our 17 millimeter wrench. You'll notice you've got your mounting bolts, you've got one here, here, on the other side on the bottom, and the other side on the top. Pick which one you want to start with. With your 17 millimeter wrench, it's going to go right up here. Get this up on there.

I've got myself a rubber mallet. If you don't have access to a rubber mallet, you could try something like double wrenching. I'm not going to show you how to do that, but I'm sure there's plenty of videos on how to do it. Whatever you do, just be careful. Once it breaks free, I just like to go like this a couple times. Just helps get the rust and everything broken up in there. Awesome. I'm going to do the same thing to all four of these bolts. Turn the wrench around.

Obviously, these bolts can't come out all the way, because you've got the hub area of the bearing. Just get them out as far as you can using your 17 millimeter wrench.

All right friends. Now, we're going to put our axle nut on. Just a few threads here. Now, we're going to use our little hammer. All right, this little one. We're going to give this bearing hub a couple nice bonks. We're just going to try to break it free from where it's pressed up against the backing plate/knuckle. All right. The reason for this, is so when I'm bonking, and this thing finally wants to break free, it's not going to be able to go too far, and won't come flying down, potentially hurt me. Last thing I want to do is for me to get hurt or God forbid you to get hurt.

Okay. Safety first. I'm going to grab my safety glasses. We're going to give it a couple bonks. Here we go. Okay, this nut did its job, saved us from potentially getting hurt. Thank you.

Grab this, grab our backing plate. We'll slide it right out of the way. What I'm doing is I'm just trying to use my a brush, and just try to make sure that I clean out all the crud that might be inside here. That's super important, because you don't want to have anything inside there that's going to hurt the ABS sensor, or get stuck in between the seal and the bearing, or the axle, or anything. We're just going to do this, get it as clean as we can. Make sure you don't have any big chunks going across the top here. This is the knuckle area. You're going to have your backing plate, and then the wheel bearing around that.

As long as it's clean enough that it doesn't have any big flakes, you're doing all right. We'll get this like this. Going to take a little bit of parts cleaner. Awesome. That looks pretty great. We can move ahead.

I'm just going to use a rag. I'm going to cover up the area where the ABS sensor is, just because I don't need any of this on there, and I'm just going to use a little bit copper Never Seize. Going to get right on the axle splines there. Bring this up and around here. Just try to get all inside along here. That's just going to make it so someday, if I ever had to, and I had to remove this bearing again, it's going to come out nice and easy for either me, or the next person that's going to be doing it.

I'd say that that looks pretty great. We've got our backing plate. All right. Little flake, get that out of here. Looks pretty decent otherwise. Just going to set it right up on here. It's going to be just like this. You're going to have the cutout for where your caliper is, and you know where the caliper's going to be, because you've got this right here.

We've got our brand new quality 1A Auto bearing here. I'm just going to take it, slide it right onto the axle splines, line everything up the best we can here. I'm just going to see if I can get these bolts lined up with the holes in the backing plate, and the holes in the knuckle. Just try to turn them in. At least try to get a few good threads before we tighten any of them down.

We're just using our 17 millimeter wrench, and we're turning in these bolts. All right. We've pretty much got all these bottomed out. Just going to snug them up. Obviously, there isn't much room to get a torque wrench with a socket in here, to be able to torque these down. I can't really give you a specific torque specification for this, where I could say, oh, torque these down to 100 foot pounds or something like that.

What you're going to have to do, just make sure that they're tight. All right. Once you've got them so they're all tight, I just take a nice rubber mallet, carefully bonk on my wrench. Reason why I'm using a rubber mallet is so I don't damage my tools. Let's give them a little three bonk each here, seems like it's working good. Last one. Give this one one more. Let's see. Yeah, those are all nice and snug. That spins good.

Awesome. All right. We've got our axle nut. Start it on here. We're just going to bottom this out now, we're not going to put the hammer down or anything. Perfect. Let's grab the torque specification, and we can move along.

All right. Now, what I'm going to do, is I'm going to take a nice long pry bar. I'm just going to go right over my lug studs like this, and I'm going to try to keep my bar flat along the stud threads, and that's just so I'm not damaging the threads while I do this. The reason why I put my bar going like this, is so the hub can't turn when I go to torque this nut. We're going to use our 36 millimeter socket, and we're going to torque this nut to 203 foot pounds with our torque wrench. Try it one more time. We know that's definitely torqued. Grab our bar, move along.

Okay. We've got our lock, and you'll notice that it has a whole bunch of slots where the corners of your axle nut can go into, and you've got a whole bunch of little slots here for where your cotter pin's going to go through. The reason for that, is so when you go to put it on, in case when you go to put it in, the hole doesn't line up with a slot. You just keep turning it and turning it, until you find an area where it lines up perfectly. Once you do, I like to use a brand new cotter pin for this. Obviously, this is super important that it stays on there. Going to hold that in there. Grab some cutters, come down like this, grab this one, bring it up. Just give them a couple bonks.

Awesome. When we go to put on the cap, I like to use a little bit of Gasket Maker or RTV, and I just go right along the edge here, where this is going to mate with the bearing itself, and if for some reason, when you were taking this cap off originally, if you happen to have poked a hole through here, and you can see it coming through the other side, this doesn't have a hole, it's just pushed in. Anyway, if it did, you would want to make sure that you put some kind of Gasket Maker there as well, to make sure that no moisture can get inside this cap, and then get this all rusted up on you.

All right. Just going to use a little bit of Gasket Maker here, see if we can get it working. Sometimes, it likes to be a pain in the butt. Looks like it's trying to. I'm just going to go right along here. It doesn't have to be anything pretty. I'm not trying to win a coloring contest or anything like that. That looks pretty decent. Just as long as it's going all the way around. If you wanted to, and you had a gloved finger, you could just kind of schmutz it all around. Make sure that you have a nice layer. All right. Use my rubber mallet. Set this in just like this. Just give it a couple loving bonks all the way around.

It's best if you try to bonk along the edges and drive it in, instead of in the center. Obviously if you bunk in the center, you could collapse it in. Just along the edges, and if for some reason you're not using a rubber mallet, you're using a metal hammer, when you go this, if you bonk and you end up hitting one of these studs, that's going to become an issue. You're going to want to keep that in mind. If you damage the threads on this, you're just going to have to try to clean them up with something. Use a small file, tap and die set or something like that. You need to make sure your lug nuts can go on there. That's why I'm using a rubber mallet.

I'd say that that looks pretty great. Going to use my gloved finger, or you can use a rag. Definitely don't use your bare hand or bare finger. This is of course a chemical. I don't want anybody getting sick. I'd say that that looks wonderful. Give it a little spin. I love it. It looks perfect. Let's continue.

All right. We're just going to clean up our rotor here. A lot of times, brand new rotors come with a coating on them that just helps prevent rust and anything really from messing up the nice beautiful surface that they made. I just like to take a little bit of parts cleaner. Give it a little spray, wipe it down. That looks great. I'm going to grab some copper Never Seize. I'm just going to try to spray the base of this. That's right where the rotor is going to be mating up against. The reason for that is, it's going to help keep moisture out of there, and also make it so the rotor's going to come off easily when it's time to take it back off someday, to do another brake job.

Now's a great time, before we get the caliper on here, just to double-check and make sure that the backing plate hasn't been bent in, because if it's hitting up against the rotor now, it's obviously going to hit up against the rotor later. Give it a little spin. That sounds horrible. Let's check it out. Carefully, give it a little push. Obviously, there are some sharp edges. Your backing plate may or may not look like this, but if it has sharp edges, I want you to be super careful.

Just going to take a pry bar. Just try to help this backing plate along. It's seen its day. It's obviously not in the best condition, but just keep working your way around. Find all the places where it might be hitting, and just maneuver it away a little bit. It's like it's hitting just a teeny bit right down here still. Oh. Love it.

Now, we're going to take our caliper, bring it right over here. Torque it right down. I know what you're thinking. Who puts on the caliper without putting the pads together first? You can think that if you want, and that's fine. I'm not going to get mad at you, but I'm going to show you why. We're going to get this all together. We're going to get it torqued down, and then we'll install the pads.

I'm just going to grab my ratchet with my 17, snug it up. Going to bottom bolt these bolts out, and we'll torque them down. Torque specifications for this is 91 foot pounds. Torqued, torqued. Awesome.

Now, it's time to get the brake hose back into the bracket here. You might notice that when you were hanging it or whatever happened, maybe the line straightened itself out, or it changed its position. As we move this around, start noticing that it gets kind of close, which is good. Just going to try to spin this now. Okay. This forky is going right through. It's got this locked in perfectly. We don't have to worry about our flex hose moving around. I'd say that looks pretty great. Let's move along.

Okay. It's time to grab our pads. Slide it right in just like this. That's cool. Same thing with this one. It should slide right in. If for some reason your pads don't slide in like this one does, and it moves around very freely, odds are you need to clean up your caliper. Obviously this is a new caliper, so it's going to slide perfectly. If it wasn't and it was an old caliper, and we tried cleaning it up with our brush and our screwdriver or whatever you use to get off the large chunks, if the pads can't move, you got a little bit more work to do.

Going to go through like this. I'm going to leave that one just like that. This one, I'm just going to go all the way through. Grab one of my little clips here, put it through this one. That feels great. Can't fall out. Awesome. The reason why I left this one like this, is because we've got this little clippy-do here, and what this is going to do, is it's going to want to separate the pads. When you step on the brake, the pistons are going to squeeze the pads, and then you release the brake. The pistons are going to want to go back in, and this is going to make the pads go back out. Okay, very nice.

I'm going to go right over the pin just like this. Now, I'm going to take this here, put it in, everything's lined up great. Grab my other little clip, slide it through. Awesome. Next, what we're going to do, we're going to make it so this little piton goes inside the hole there, and this ear comes up over the top of the pad. Do the same thing for this one. Awesome.

Now, let's assume we're inside the vehicle. When we step on the brake, we release the brake, step on it, release. That's doing its job. Something to pay attention to, is when you mount this in, you want to make sure that this area of the clip isn't hitting up against your rotor. It's very possible that maybe it's bent a little bit and it wants to hit, like this one is. Super close. What I like to do at this point, just grab it, give it a little tug.

Now, I've got a pretty good distance between there and there. Just give it a little push, goes back down. Let's try again. Give a little push, goes back down, but it's still clearing the rotor. It's not hitting at all. At that point, it looks perfect.

Now, we're going to grab our wheel. These wheels can be heavy and I don't want you hurt yourself. Instead of grabbing your wheel like this and trying to lift with your back and potentially hurting yourself, show you a little secret. You take your leg. I'm assuming you're not worried about your pants getting a little dirty. I'm just going to grab it like this, roll it right up your leg, and now you can use your leg/ab muscles to lift it right up, use your leg to hold it, balance it. See, that works pretty good.

I'm going to take my lug nut, my socket, put it right on here. Now that we know we've got one locked in, we can release it. Grab the rest of our lug nuts. We're going to start all these on. We'll bottom them out, and then we'll torque them down.

All right. Let's bottom out these lug nuts. Perfect. We'll get this down on the ground and we'll torque them down to manufacturer specifications. Okay, friends, let's get our torque down. We've got our 21 millimeter socket. We've got our torque wrench set to 83 foot pounds. We're going to go in a crisscross manner. Okay. I'm just going to go around one more time. It's a small price to pay for safety. Awesome.

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