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Hi, I'm Mike Green. I am one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing and maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20 plus years' experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this, to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly, that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.
In this video, we will be replacing the hub on this '98 Pontiac Grand Prix. This hub fits a whole bunch of different GM cars, Buick Century, Regal, Cadillac Deville, Eldorado, Olds Mobile, Chevy Impala, Monte Carlo, Bonneville, Grand Prix, Montana Transport, Chevy Venture, all kinds of different stuff. Here's the list of tools you need for the Grand Prix. Really what you need is basically metric sockets from 13 mm up to 19 mm, plus the large hub nut, which is anywhere from 32 to 35 mm and then the rest of the stuff and plus throw in there some penetrating oil and a hammer and rubber mallet.
If your hub doesn't come apart as easily as the one that did in this video, you may need an axle or a gear puller. If you are working with hand tools, start on the ground. Remove your lug nut covers, and loosen up your lug nuts. I've got the benefit of air tools, so I'm going to raise and secure the car and remove the wheel and tire.
I've removed the wheel and turned the wheels all the way to the right here, so I can access the brake caliper bolts, which is the inside ones, one here and then this one here. Those bolts are 15 mm, I am going to remove them. You don't want the brake hose on the caliper to be stressed, so I just kind of took a wire tie and tied the caliper up here, then remove the brake disc. Be careful not to touch the disc and if you do touch it, just clean it off with some rubbing alcohol or mineral spirits when you put it back together.
There's three bolts that hold the hub on. I'll go in behind here and show them to you. There's one here, one up in the middle there, and then back here next to the, this is the steering tie rod, there is one right there. It'll help probably using a little penetrating oil, right on the opposite side. Now we are going to remove those bolts. They are 13 mm, 1/2 inch is a standard equivalent actually it fits, but I am using 3/8 drive tools, so I going to remove those three bolts and the reason you have to use this size tool, is to get in behind on this top one, you need smaller tools in order to get in there. Then you get a nice big handle to work it.
I'm just going to kind of fast forward through here. As I remove these three bolts and as you can tell, they take quite a bit of force to get going. It will help if you have a large breaker bar and then just swivel the steering back and forth to make it easy to get to the bolts on each side. Now I am going to remove the middle hub nut. I have impact tools, so that makes it really easy. If you don't have impact tools, what you want to do is, before you remove the brake caliper, have somebody hold the brakes and then with hand tools, you can pull that hub nut off. This hub nut is 35 mm, so you'll need a 35 mm socket.
Now you need to get the axle back out. You don't want to use a hammer and whack it hard, but what I'd do is just give it a check. If I see it move a little bit with the hammer, which it does, then I would have you break out the rubber mallet and whack away. Rubber mallet is not going to hurt the insides of your CV joint. Now I got the two lower bolts out and the top one is really loose, so now it is kind of a matter of not being nice. You got to pound on each side of the flange and the hub and slowly work the flange out of the steering knuckle.
I have the hub work loose, now I am just removing the top bolt the rest of the way. I just kind of left it in there in case I hit it hard enough and it just came flying out, just safety. Unplug the harness right here and flip up this with your thumb and pull it off. This is what you would rather not see happen. Basically, the hub has been in there so long, the back part stayed in the steering knuckle and this came apart, so what I am going to have to do is use some driving tools and just try and drive the rest of it out of the steering knuckle.
As you see, it turns out to be not much of a problem. You just beat on it with the punch and hammer and it pops out. Don't worry about damaging it or anything like that. I poked a few holes in it.
You just want to push the clip off of this bracket and the rest of that comes out. Push in on the axle and kind of up a little bit and your connector comes out.
Clean up some of the corrosion on here. I'm just gonna use some penetrating oil just to lubricate it. Now it's ready for the new one to go in. Okay, here's our new hub from 1A Auto and not only is it prettier and shinier, it's all in one piece, as it should be, as opposed to three separate pieces. If you kinda use your imagination here this is all the same, it's gonna bolt up the same and now we are gonna put it in and it's not going to make a big groaning grinding noise.
Okay so that ends this part of this video, part one. Check out our other videos to see the installation of the hub.
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