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Product Features
TRQ drivetrain kits are manufactured using premium raw materials to restore original performance. Each TRQ drivetrain component is designed to be a direct, maintenance-free replacement to the stock unit. To extend the service life of your drivetrain, TRQ recommends replacing wheel hubs, bearings, and constant velocity (CV) drive axles at the same time to ensure even wear of components and improved ride comfort. All products are fit and road-tested in our Massachusetts R&D facility to ensure we deliver on our promise of Trusted Reliable Quality.
Install Tip: When replacing steering components, have a professional alignment performed afterwards. This ensures proper tracking and even tire wear.
Our steering and suspension components are pre-greased and sealed for long life and do not require the extra maintenance typically required by greaseable versions.
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WARNING: This product can expose you to chemicals including Lead and Lead Compounds, which are known to the State of California to cause cancer, and birth defects or other reproductive harm. For more information, go to www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.
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This item is backed by our limited lifetime warranty. In the event that this item should fail due to manufacturing defects during intended use, we will replace the part free of charge. This warranty covers the cost of the part only.
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Tools used
Hey friends. It's Len here at 1AAuto. Today I'm working on a 2001 Ford Focus and I'm going to show you how to do a right front axle. It's going to be a very easy job and I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it. So, if you need this or any other part you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com. Thanks.
Okay, friends. So, here we are. We've got the vehicle supported off the ground a little bit but the wheel is still on the ground, everything's nice and safe. We're going to go ahead and loosen up these lug nuts, they are 19 millimeters. I'm just going to take a 19 millimeter with a long ratchet. All I'm doing here is breaking them free. I'm not taking them all the way off. I don't want the wheel to go off kilter, damage the rim or the lug studs. Now that we've got those loose we can raise the vehicle, make sure it's safely supported, and we'll move along.
We've got it raised and supported safely. Now I'm going to remove these lug nuts with a 19 millimeter. I'm going to use my air gun. You can use a ratchet. The reason why I showed you how to break them free on the ground with the long ratchet is just in case you're using something besides an air gun to take off the lug nuts. So safety glasses, hand protection. Hold that wheel so it can't fall off. Roll this aside. We can move along.
So, now we're getting to the point where we're going to be taking off the axle nut which is this right here, it's the big nut. This is a 32 millimeter. If you're not using an air gun you're going to be trying to use a ratchet with a socket. You're going to find it hard to remove this because it's torqued down very tight. So, when you use the ratchet, you try to spin it, it's probably just going to turn this. An easy solution for that would be lower it down closer to the ground, use some sort of long pry bar, just stick it in between the studs like that. You want to make sure that it's as flat as possible going with the threads not sitting at a diamond or anything. You want to go more square so it's just flush. Then once this is on the ground pressing up against it you'll be clear to turn this and the rotor won't be able to turn. Okay.
I'm going to be using the air gun with my 32 millimeter. I'm just going to take this nut off. That's your axle nut, big old socket. I'm just going to take this and I'm going to put it on just a few threads here, a few good threads. I'm going to take my little hammer and just give that a couple of bonks so it's going in through the wheel bearing. If you needed to, you could use a little bit of penetrant in there. This one seems like it went back okay. That's nice. I'm just going to put this on, blast that off again. As you can tell, the axle pushed its way through a little bit. We can take care of that.
Now, I'm going to take this flex hose. It looks like it needs a flex hose. I'm not going to worry about that for the purpose of this video. There's a nut right here, 15 millimeter, I'm just going to blast it right off. Right now what's happening is the bolts spinning so I'm just going to use a torque bit and get it in there. All right. That's what the nut looks like. We'll set this aside. Take the bolt out. That's what the pinch bolt looks like. Could put both these together and it came through from the front to the back. That's the way it's going to go back in. Try to remember that.
So, we've got this out. We've got this free. Now we're going to come over here to the outer tie rod nut. I believe that's a 16 millimeter. Just grab my socket. Yup. It fits on there great. Here we go. That's what that nut looks like. We'll put this aside. Now what we need to do is we need to break the outer tie rod end free from the knuckle. To do that you want to make sure that you hit right on the knuckle. You don't want to hit the boot here. You don't want to hit the tie rod and you definitely don't want to hit the stud. It could peen over those threads and that'll become an issue. I mean generally speaking you could probably just tap them out and they might be fine or you could be buying yourself another tire rod so let's skip that.
If you're underneath the vehicle and you're working and you don't want to get hurt you could just take the nut, put it on a few threads that way there when I bonk this and it does drop down it won't come swinging down and hurt myself, or me, or anybody else. I'm just going to give this a few bonks. That pulls right down. This is your outer tie rod end. Put that nut back up there. If you want to you could put the nut up here. It's up to you. It might help you remember where they go. Okay, we're cruising.
We're not replacing this lower ball joint at this point so you want to be careful not to damage the boot when you try to separate this. A good way to do that would be let's see if I can turn the wheel. Essentially what we need to do is we need to hit on the lower control arm to try to get this to bonk down. You could try using a hammer. You want to be careful for your axle. If you hit your axle boot you might pinch a hole into it and cause an issue where you're spraying out grease and your axle goes bad so you want to be careful for that. You can use an air chisel with a hammer bit, try to drive it down. That's probably the way I'm going to try. There's a couple different options. You could even use a big punch so you have more swing room, completely up to you. I'm going to grab an air chisel with a hammer bit and I'll show you what I'm talking about.
Okay, friends, here we go. We've got our air hammer. This is a performance tool available at 1AAuto.com. We've got a little nice hammer head flat bit there. This is going to help drive down on that lower control arm for us. It's going to give good vibration. I'm going to apply pressure as I go. Hopefully it'll drive the ball joint out of the bottom of the knuckle. Come around here and see if I can get it on. You want ear protection of course, eye Protection. It looks like it's working. That's great. That's a quality tool. Very nice. We didn't cause any damage to the ball joint. That tool came in handy.
I'm going to take my pry bar or whatever you happen to have in your hand, you can use a screwdriver. We're just going to push this axle through the bearing. Okay. And we're going to pull this at the same time and then we're going to try to take the axle, slide it out here. You want to be careful when you're pulling. You don't want to put too much pressure on your flex hose. Flex hoses and everything like that are high pressure for your braking system. Super important that they're in good condition. I'm going to push this, try to grab my axle, slide it to the side. Perfect. Now we're clear to move on to the next step. I'm going to get underneath the vehicle and we'll start tearing apart the center there.
So now it's time to remove the carrier bearing bracket. There's a nut here and a nut up there, 13 millimeters. You're going to remove those. Take off this outside bracket. Now we can move along to the next step. I'm just going to get this loose. I'll leave it on there a little bit. Nice and loose. That's what we're looking at. Just two nuts, a little plate. If it looks like this thing's rotted, getting thin, you might want to replace it. That's what holds your carrier bearing in which keeps your axle from being able to move around, so super important. We'll set the stuff aside.
So, I'm under the vehicle. I've got my eye protection, ear protection, hand protection. I've got my air chisel quality performance tool 1AAuto.com. I'm going to try to go right here, right on this little piece of the axle. Try to drive it out with the air chisel. If you're not replacing the axle you want to definitely try to stay away from the bearing. If you are replacing the axle it comes with a new carrier bearing. So, if this is easier for you to get onto you can go ahead and get that a bonk. Essentially this axle has to come out straight because it goes into the transmission right over here. Going to come in like this. The bearings separating from the housing plate right here so it's getting ready to come out. At that point, the axle is going to get heavy so you want to make sure you have a hand on it at least. Just going to keep on trying here.
Something to remember when you remove the axle is fluids going to more than likely come out from your transmission so you want to make sure you have a nice catch bucket under there, protect the environment, make sure you collect any chemicals that you can and recycle them properly. This axle is going to be a little heavy so you want to be careful not to hurt yourself. All we're going to do is try to shake it around a little bit, going to pull it out, and there is your right front axle.
Okay friends, a quick product comparison for you. Over here we have our original right front axle out of our 2001 Ford Focus and over here we have our brand new quality 1AAuto part. As you can tell they're both the same length which is super important. The new axle comes with a brand new carrier bearing which is also super important partly because how are you going to get this old one off and put a new one on, you need special equipment for that. The new axle comes with it, brand new boots, clamps, everything like that. Even comes with a brand new nut. It's got the splined end over here. This part goes into your bearing. You can follow it down, get your outer CV shaft, inner CV shaft, carrier bearing, and then this is the splined area that goes into your transmission. Everything looks great. I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a quality part to install into the vehicle so I'm going to go ahead and do it. If you need this or any other part, you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com. Thanks.
So, now it's time to install the right front axle. I'm just going to come in over here just like this. Just going to come up here. Start sliding into the transmission. Now it's going to sit into the carrier bearing bracket on the carrier bearing bracket. You come around this side, maybe it's easier to see. There's a little lip right there pretty much along where the edge is there's a lip and that stops the bearing from going in further. Once you get the bearing to that point that means you've gone in as far as you need to for the axle seal and everything's ready to go. You can go ahead and button that up and then move along to the outside. So, to get this to go in you can try to push it. Sometimes they don't want to push. So, what I'm going to do at this point is I'm going to grab a rubber mallet. I'm to give this a couple of bonks right here and help it along.
So, I've got my rubber mallet. I'm going to bonk this in and I'm going to pay special attention to how far in I go. Once it seems like it stopped I'm going to make sure that I check it. We don't need to go any further than we have to here. Let's see. It's like we can go a skosh more. It sounds audibly different. It's like where we're right up on it. Cool, so we're far enough there. Give it a little spin here. That feels good. We'll get our bracket with our 13 millimeter nuts. We'll tighten this up on here and we can move along.
We've got our carrier bearing bracket and our two nuts, 13 millimeters. We're just going to get it up on here just like that. Get these started on here, not going to tighten either of them down until they're both started of course. There we are. If you want to use a little bit of thread locker you could do that. That one's bottomed out, just going to do the same to the other one and then I'll go ahead and snug them both. Okay snug. Just a little bit tight, tight. The axle is sitting inside the seal where it's supposed to be. The carrier bearing is right up against the edge. Looks good. All right. We can move on to the next step.
I like to put a little Copper never seize on the splines of the axle where it goes into the bearing. It's just going to help us along if ever we have to take it back apart someday. Hopefully the axle won't be frozen inside the bearing assembly. There we are. Now we're just going to grab this, we're going to pull it out. Once again paying special attention to our brake hose. Just going to grab it, pull it. I'm going to try to get it right inside the back of the bearing there. Right in here. If it seems like it doesn't want to fit you can give it a little twist. Maybe the splines just needed to be lined up. This is just a little boot cover thing in case you're wondering what's jiggling around. There we are. The axles coming through, it means we're looking pretty good.
Now we're going to pull down on this arm right here and we're going to try to get the ball joint stud inside the knuckle. Might be easier if I take this off and put it directly on the knuckle that way it's one less thing I have to worry about jiggling around. Let's see, grab a pry bar, turn this a little bit. Let's see if this helps me pull it down. It does. Got the ball joint stud. Let's see what it looks like. Looks like we are pretty close. There we are. Just great my rubber mallet again, give it a couple of bonks. If it doesn't seem like it wants to go in you can just wiggle it. A lot of times it just goes at an angle. Okay, it's in. We still got our boot cover. That's sitting right where it needs to be. Very nice.
We've got our pinch bolt. We remember this went through from the front to the rear. If you want to you can put a little bit of never seize here, probably help it out down the line. There we are. Easy peasy. We've got our nut. This goes on the backside, 15 millimeter. I'm just going to get this started and then I'm going to go get the torque spec for you and we can bottom it out and then torque it down.
We're going to go 37 foot pounds with our torque wrench, 15 millimeter on the backside nut there. Then I'm going to hold the front side using my torque bit 50. It's a little star looking thing. Same thing we used to remove it. 37 foot pounds with a 15 millimeter. There we are, just grab it one more time just in case. Lower ball joint pinch bolt is tight. Now we can move ahead. We can grab this outer tie rod in and force it up in there. We've got the nut. It's got a little neoprene locker on there. If you want to go ahead and use a little thread locker you can.
I'm just going to bottom this out and then we'll torque it up. I was mistaken. There we are. I'm just going to grab my torque wrench. We're going to torque that down to 35 foot pounds. There we are. Just going to go ahead and hit it again. Torqued. Torqued. We'll grab this, flex hose, get it back sitting where it needs to be. If you don't it can flop around like this, rub up against your wheel, rub a hole. It could be very bad. There we are.
We'll go ahead and we'll get this started on the axle nut. You can see it's got these little peened over areas, that's for locking the nut onto your axle. If you see something like that you don't need to add any thread locker. It's already set up to be locked on. So, now we'll just take this, we're going to snug this up and then we're going to torque it down. Okay. So, we've got this nice and close to the ground. We're going to go ahead and get this axle nut bottomed out. The torque spec for it is 233 foot pounds. We use a long handle pry bar just like this. I'm going to bring the rotor around, lock it in. That's going to prevent it from spinning on me while I go ahead and try to snug this axle nut up.
Once I feel like it's pretty bottomed out I'm going to go ahead and switch over to the torque wrench. Tighten it down, 233 foot pounds. Do it one more time, tight. There we are. Now we're clear to put the wheel on. It's time to get the wheel up on here, bring it over, bring it up close to your leg, lift it up with your leg and the ab muscle. Four lug nuts. Let's start it on there. We'll just bottom these out with our 19 millimeter socket and then we'll bring it down on the ground so the wheel is just barely touching. We'll torque these up to 94 foot pounds, crisscross pattern. Time to torque them down, 94 foot pounds with our 19. One, two, three, four. You want to go around again go around again. Tight.
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Tools used
Hey, friends. It's Len here at 1AAuto. Today I'm working on a 2001 Ford Focus and I'm going to show you how to do a left front axle. It's going to be a very easy job. I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it. If you need this or any other part, you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com. thanks.
Okay, friends, so we've got the vehicle supported under all its lift points. We're going to bring the vehicle up a little bit. Try to keep the wheels so it's just barely touching the ground. We're going to break free the lug nuts, 19mm. If you're going to be using an airgun, you really shouldn't have to do this, but if you're using a ratchet, you want to do it with the wheels still touching the ground. Now that they're loose, we can raise the vehicle and we'll get busy.
Here we go. Time to get the wheel off. Use your ratchet, use your air gun, use your 19, whatever you're doing. Take off the last one. I'm going to hold the wheel. It's nice and corroded on there. Just put one of these lug nuts back on. I'm just going to give us a little bunk, see if we can get it to break free. Feels like a no. Okay. Something else that we can try doing. Just grab a pry bar or you can use a rubber mallet if you want it to. I use a pry bar. I just come from the backside, pry up against the lower control arm and the wheel. Use a little leverage break free. Easy peasy. Some people might try to use a hammer. You could dent your wheel. A rubber mallet could work. All right. We removed the wheel. Now we have a clear view of what we're working on.
It's always a good habit to a spray everything down with some penetrant spray as well. You know, because that's going to help soak in, because what we're going to have to do is we're going to have to take this knot off right here, pop the sway bar link out of the way. We're going to remove this bolt right here. This is a pinch bolt. It squeezes your knuckle around your strut. Once we get this off, we'll move ahead to this one. Then once we get that all off, we'll go ahead and give this a couple bonks, see if we can drive it down.
What I'm going to do here, I'm just going to use some locking pliers. I'm going to try to grab the backside of this sway bar link, try to hold onto it. Then I'm going to use a 15mm, try to remove this nut right here. you can use a ratchet or whatever you want to do. If you have access to an air gun, it's definitely helpful. We sell them at 1AAuto.com, by the way,
There's that. We've got our brake hose out of the way. It's going to have plenty of slack so when we swing our knuckle down, once this breaks free, it won't put a tag on our brake hose. Let's see what size this bolt is. It's a 15 as well. Safety glasses, of course.
This is our pinch bolt. If you take a look at it and it looks like it's corroded and rotted away, you'd want to replace this. All right? This one looks like it's pretty good. Just a little rusted. I'll go ahead and clean it up before I re-install it, but I'd say that this one's still reusable. I'm going to set this aside and we'll move along.
Here we go a little bit more penetrant. Cool. You're going to take your hammer and you're going to try to bonk right on this knuckle right here, okay? Just give it a couple bonks: bonk, bonk. See if you can get it to break free. I'm going to bring it down to a working level. This a little bit high for me to try to swing. I don't want to hit the fender. It's a beautiful fender. I'm going to bring it down and then I'll show you what I'm talking about.
Okay. We can go ahead and bonk right on here. If you felt the need, you could take a lug nut. Just put it on here. We still have the brakes attached so the rotor really can't go anywhere, but if you want to make sure that the rotor doesn't move around very much, it couldn't hurt to just throw that on there. That's going to help prevent the rotor from moving around in rust falling down in between the rotor and the hub. Looks like it's starting to slide down. I could swing a little harder if I want to. I just want to be careful. Like I said, I don't want to hit the fender, so I'm just ...
Yep. That looks pretty good. It looks like we're cruising along. Still got quite a bit to go though. It feels like we're about maybe about halfway up that knuckle. Right about here is where the strut ends. What I'm going to do, I'm going to remove this axle nut right here. I'm going to try to push the axle through a little bit. I don't want to put too much pressure on the axle itself. I'll grab the a soccer for that. I'll tell you what it is. We'll remove it. We'll try to drive the axle in a little bit. 32mm.
There's our axle nut. we'll set this aside. If you don't have an airgun, impact gun to take the axle nut off, you can do something like this with a pry bar. You just kind of stick it in between the studs just like that and up against the ground, assuming you had the vehicle lower. That's going to help prevent your herb and everything from turning. Now with that there you can put your socket with your long ratchet on there. You can relieve pressure or a take off the nut without spinning your whole hub. Okay? That'll just hold it still for you. I just want to give you a heads up on that.
This is our air chisel available at 1AAuto.com, okay? Performance tool. It's going to work pretty good. All we're going to do is we're going to use a center punch bit, try to go right in that hole, apply pressure, and just air chisel it. Get it to vibrate, push the axle in a little bit, and that should give us a little bit of slack to continue with what we're doing here. That was easy peasy. All right, let's continue with the bonking.
Getting pretty close now. Okay. If you have access to a pry bar, all I'm going to do is I'm going to try to lower those down a little bit, just like that. All right? I'm just going to go ahead and drive out this axle. Pull down on the knuckle as I go, making sure that I don't put too much tension on this flex hose right here. All we're going to do now, pull the axle like that. See if we can sneak it by. Okay. What I'm going to do, or what I want to do, is just try to make it so the knuckle can't flop around, so whatever you have to do to make it happen. Use a bungee cord, ratchet strap, duck tape. Don't try to copy this. Okay, cool.
This is not putting any pressure on our flex hose at this point. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab my pry bar. I'm going to go underneath the vehicle. Right up through here, I'm going to try to apply pressure between the transmission itself and the axle, give it a little pressure. Hopefully pop that right out. That's my plan. Let's do it.
Okay, so we're at point that we're underneath the vehicle now. Take your pry bar. You can try to pry between the transmission and the axle and see if you can pop the axle out. If for some reason that's not working, you can keep trying. Give it a try. You could also go with something like this. It's a little axle removal tool. We sell this 1AAuto.com. What you do with this is you would just put it between the transmission and the axle, just like that. It's kind of at an angle. It's going to act as a wedge and hopefully try to break this free because on the backside of the axle there's a little snap ring that holds it into the transmission. Now that I've got that up there I'm going to wear my safety glasses, of course. I'm just going to try and give this a couple loving bonks. Okay.
Looks like it's coming out. I'm just going to continue with the same tool, but I'm going to hold my axle. There we are. It's coming out. We got a little bit of fluid dripping down. I'm just going to grab a bucket so I can make sure that I recycle the fluid properly. Let's try our pry bar. Again, You're going to want to make sure you check your transmission fluid, obviously, after this. If you're losing transmission fluid like I am, odds are you're going to need to add a little bit. Perfect. Now we've removed our left front axle.
Here we are, friends, a quick product comparison for you. Over here we have our original 2001 Ford Focus left front axle. We just removed it. Over here, we have our brand new quality 1A axle. As you can tell, they're both the same length. It might be hard to tell because they're kinda off-kilter. It would be nice if they were straight, but let's put them sideways. It's better diagonal. They're the same size. Okay? Very important. Make sure you have the same size. You don't have one that's sitting all the way out here this long, the other ones back like that, if you set them up nice. They do squash together a little bit, so if you happen to notice that one's a little longer than the other, you can try to compress them. Okay?
We've got brand new boots. Super important, because the boots are usually what goes bad. Start spraying out grease, they let moisture in, your axle goes bad. It comes with a brand new locking nut. Super important. You want to make sure that you replace that, obviously. You've got your splined end. You've got a brand new locking clip here. This is the part that presses into your transmission. With all that said, as you can tell, this is a quality axle. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be great to install this into the vehicle, so I'm going to go ahead and do it. If you need this or any other part, you can always check us out 1AAuto.com. Thanks
Okay, friends. It's go time. Let's start getting this axle back in here. You'll notice on the end of your axle where it presses into the transmission, you have this little clip. It feels like it's loose. Maybe you think it's broken. It's not. When you get this into the transmission, as you're pressing in, it's going to try squishing down, and then once it gets to the spot inside the transmission where it can spread back out, that's going to be what locks your axle in. That's why we had such a hard time popping it out because of this little clip right here. It's a blessing and a curse. Okay? If your axle doesn't have this on it, whether it's your old axle or your new axle, whatever you're dealing with, or if it's bent or just doesn't seem like it's got as much spring retention as you need, you're going to want to replace it. This is a brand new axle, so I'm not worried about it. It looks like it's in great condition, as I would hope, being new.
I'm just going to push this a little bit out of the way. When I put in my axle, the seal itself, the rubber part, is going to rub right on this area right here, so you want to make sure that it's clean of any debris, scuffs, scratches, dings, maybe you bounced it off the ground trying to lift it up. This looks great. I'd say we're clear to install it.
Just going to bring it over. Try to be careful for the rubber part of the seal. Okay. Here we go. It feels like it's getting ready to go in. Okay. For this next part, I like to keep the nut on there. I'll show you why. The end of the axle is threaded. Okay? That's how your nut threads on. You're going to use a hammer to give this a couple of bonks. I like to use a rubber hammer. Obviously it's not going to end up damaging the threads. If you don't have access to one and you're using a regular hammer. Well, use your old nut, of course. Don't use your new one because it's going to damage it. I'm just going to use a rubber hammer and I'm going to give it a couple of bonks, but I'm going to protect those threads as much as I can. Just in case the unforeseeable happens and they get mangled, the nut's going to protect me from that. Here we go.
Okay? It kind of made an audible sound. It sounded different than the first couple of wacks. It went from a light bonk to a heavy bonk, so I just say we got it done. It looks pretty good. We'll give it a little tug, not too much because we can separate the universal joint there, or the CV joint. That feels really good so I'd say we're clear to move onto the next step.
Okay, so I read a little bit of copper never seize. What I want to do with this, I'm not going to do it yet, but what I want to do with it, so I'm going to spray inside here. I'm going to get this nice and lubricated. I'm going to spray either on the splines of the axle, or even better, inside the splines of the wheel bearing. Okay? That way there everything can be lubricated and it can move around. As for now what I want to do, though, is I'm going to put a little bit of this copper never seize right inside the bearing here, so it's going to come spraying out. I'm going to put on my safety glasses. It's aerosol based. There we are. I'll set this aside.
Now we're going to take our axle, we're going to put it inside the hole right there, get everything lined up. There our new nut. Okay. We want to be careful at this point because when we relieve pressure from this, what can happen is the knuckle can drop further than what it needs to and you can put pressure on your flex hose right here. You don't want to put any tears on it, so whatever you need to do to get the axle so we can flex. Get down in there just like that. If you need to turn your wheel bearing a little bit to get the splines lined up, you could do that. Okay. We're cruising along here.
Now what we need to do is we need to get our pry bar inside here. We're going to lower down the lower control arm. It's going to bring down our knuckle a little bit. We should be able to slide this right in. Before we do that, we'll grab our copper never seize again. Safety glasses. Good to go. Let me grab my pry bar. Come around this way a little bit. I'm just going to try to press down. Hopefully I can get my knuckle down low enough that I can get my strut in there. Sometimes it can be a little difficult. Obviously, watch for pinch points. Safety first. I can't see what you're doing. Just get stuff wiggling around here a little bit.
I've got my jack. I'm going to put it underneath the ball joint area and try to jack this up. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of maneuverability here, a bit of brute force. Make sure it's lined up, and it is. It's going. It's just a nice tight fit.
Okay, so now that I've got the knuckle pushed all the way up and the hole for the knuckle and the strap are lined up, I can use my pinch bolt, you can use a little bit of thread locker if you'd like. It's up to you. I'm going to wear my safety glasses, of course, because I'm using a gun here. We're going to torque that down. Next, what we can do, put that on there. We'll get our jack out of the way here. We'll go get that torque spec and we'll be able to move along.
For the pinch bolt right here, you want to go 66 foot pounds with your 15mm. There we are. just going to hit it one more time real quick. Torqued 66 foot pounds with my 15mm.
Okay, let's get our sway bar link. There we are. We've got our nut. 15mm Okay. I'm just going to hold the backside there with some locking pliers. Tight. Perfect. All right, let's move along.
Okay, we've got our axle nut. I'm just going to start it on here. Give it a few good threads. Make sure it's going on. Now we're just going to blast this on, but we don't want to go too tight. We just kind of kind of want to get it so it's close to the bottomed out and then stop, because we're going to torque this down. Here we are. 32mm socket. It looks like it's getting pretty close. Okay. I'm going to leave it there for now. We'll go ahead and torque it down and that'll get it to the correct specifications. You don't want to over tighten this, ruin the bearing we just put in there. Let's move it ...
Let's take off that stabilizing lug nut that we throw on there. Okay. We'll grab our wheel, bring it over. We're just going to lift it right up with our leg. Use our ab muscles. Hold the wheel. Put our lug nut back on here. I'm going to grab the other three.
Time to go ahead and tighten up these lug nuts. 100 foot pounds. We're going to go in a crisscross pattern, never around the circle. Let's do it again. Tight. We're going to go ahead and torque this down, 266 foot pounds. Using my 32mm socket. Getting close. Tight.
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Hey, friends. It's Len here at 1AAuto. Today I'm working on a 2001 Ford Focus and I'm going to show you how to do a left front axle. It's going to be a very easy job. I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it. If you need this or any other part, you can always check us out at 1AAuto.com. thanks.
Okay, friends, so we've got the vehicle supported under all its lift points. We're going to bring the vehicle up a little bit. Try to keep the wheels so it's just barely touching the ground. We're going to break free the lug nuts, 19mm. If you're going to be using an airgun, you really shouldn't have to do this, but if you're using a ratchet, you want to do it with the wheels still touching the ground. Now that they're loose, we can raise the vehicle and we'll get busy.
Here we go. Time to get the wheel off. Use your ratchet, use your air gun, use your 19, whatever you're doing. Take off the last one. I'm going to hold the wheel. It's nice and corroded on there. Just put one of these lug nuts back on. I'm just going to give us a little bunk, see if we can get it to break free. Feels like a no. Okay. Something else that we can try doing. Just grab a pry bar or you can use a rubber mallet if you want it to. I use a pry bar. I just come from the backside, pry up against the lower control arm and the wheel. Use a little leverage break free. Easy peasy. Some people might try to use a hammer. You could dent your wheel. A rubber mallet could work. All right. We removed the wheel. Now we have a clear view of what we're working on.
It's always a good habit to a spray everything down with some penetrant spray as well. You know, because that's going to help soak in, because what we're going to have to do is we're going to have to take this knot off right here, pop the sway bar link out of the way. We're going to remove this bolt right here. This is a pinch bolt. It squeezes your knuckle around your strut. Once we get this off, we'll move ahead to this one. Then once we get that all off, we'll go ahead and give this a couple bonks, see if we can drive it down.
What I'm going to do here, I'm just going to use some locking pliers. I'm going to try to grab the backside of this sway bar link, try to hold onto it. Then I'm going to use a 15mm, try to remove this nut right here. you can use a ratchet or whatever you want to do. If you have access to an air gun, it's definitely helpful. We sell them at 1AAuto.com, by the way,
There's that. We've got our brake hose out of the way. It's going to have plenty of slack so when we swing our knuckle down, once this breaks free, it won't put a tag on our brake hose. Let's see what size this bolt is. It's a 15 as well. Safety glasses, of course.
This is our pinch bolt. If you take a look at it and it looks like it's corroded and rotted away, you'd want to replace this. All right? This one looks like it's pretty good. Just a little rusted. I'll go ahead and clean it up before I re-install it, but I'd say that this one's still reusable. I'm going to set this aside and we'll move along.
Here we go a little bit more penetrant. Cool. You're going to take your hammer and you're going to try to bonk right on this knuckle right here, okay? Just give it a couple bonks: bonk, bonk. See if you can get it to break free. I'm going to bring it down to a working level. This a little bit high for me to try to swing. I don't want to hit the fender. It's a beautiful fender. I'm going to bring it down and then I'll show you what I'm talking about.
Okay. We can go ahead and bonk right on here. If you felt the need, you could take a lug nut. Just put it on here. We still have the brakes attached so the rotor really can't go anywhere, but if you want to make sure that the rotor doesn't move around very much, it couldn't hurt to just throw that on there. That's going to help prevent the rotor from moving around in rust falling down in between the rotor and the hub. Looks like it's starting to slide down. I could swing a little harder if I want to. I just want to be careful. Like I said, I don't want to hit the fender, so I'm just ...
Yep. That looks pretty good. It looks like we're cruising along. Still got quite a bit to go though. It feels like we're about maybe about halfway up that knuckle. Right about here is where the strut ends. What I'm going to do, I'm going to remove this axle nut right here. I'm going to try to push the axle through a little bit. I don't want to put too much pressure on the axle itself. I'll grab the a soccer for that. I'll tell you what it is. We'll remove it. We'll try to drive the axle in a little bit. 32mm.
There's our axle nut. we'll set this aside. If you don't have an airgun, impact gun to take the axle nut off, you can do something like this with a pry bar. You just kind of stick it in between the studs just like that and up against the ground, assuming you had the vehicle lower. That's going to help prevent your herb and everything from turning. Now with that there you can put your socket with your long ratchet on there. You can relieve pressure or a take off the nut without spinning your whole hub. Okay? That'll just hold it still for you. I just want to give you a heads up on that.
This is our air chisel available at 1AAuto.com, okay? Performance tool. It's going to work pretty good. All we're going to do is we're going to use a center punch bit, try to go right in that hole, apply pressure, and just air chisel it. Get it to vibrate, push the axle in a little bit, and that should give us a little bit of slack to continue with what we're doing here. That was easy peasy. All right, let's continue with the bonking.
Getting pretty close now. Okay. If you have access to a pry bar, all I'm going to do is I'm going to try to lower those down a little bit, just like that. All right? I'm just going to go ahead and drive out this axle. Pull down on the knuckle as I go, making sure that I don't put too much tension on this flex hose right here. All we're going to do now, pull the axle like that. See if we can sneak it by. Okay. What I'm going to do, or what I want to do, is just try to make it so the knuckle can't flop around, so whatever you have to do to make it happen. Use a bungee cord, ratchet strap, duck tape. Don't try to copy this. Okay, cool.
This is not putting any pressure on our flex hose at this point. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab my pry bar. I'm going to go underneath the vehicle. Right up through here, I'm going to try to apply pressure between the transmission itself and the axle, give it a little pressure. Hopefully pop that right out. That's my plan. Let's do it.
Okay, so we're at point that we're underneath the vehicle now. Take your pry bar. You can try to pry between the transmission and the axle and see if you can pop the axle out. If for some reason that's not working, you can keep trying. Give it a try. You could also go with something like this. It's a little axle removal tool. We sell this 1AAuto.com. What you do with this is you would just put it between the transmission and the axle, just like that. It's kind of at an angle. It's going to act as a wedge and hopefully try to break this free because on the backside of the axle there's a little snap ring that holds it into the transmission. Now that I've got that up there I'm going to wear my safety glasses, of course. I'm just going to try and give this a couple loving bonks. Okay.
Looks like it's coming out. I'm just going to continue with the same tool, but I'm going to hold my axle. There we are. It's coming out. We got a little bit of fluid dripping down. I'm just going to grab a bucket so I can make sure that I recycle the fluid properly. Let's try our pry bar. Again, You're going to want to make sure you check your transmission fluid, obviously, after this. If you're losing transmission fluid like I am, odds are you're going to need to add a little bit. Perfect. Now we've removed our left front axle.
Here we are, friends, a quick product comparison for you. Over here we have our original 2001 Ford Focus left front axle. We just removed it. Over here, we have our brand new quality 1A axle. As you can tell, they're both the same length. It might be hard to tell because they're kinda off-kilter. It would be nice if they were straight, but let's put them sideways. It's better diagonal. They're the same size. Okay? Very important. Make sure you have the same size. You don't have one that's sitting all the way out here this long, the other ones back like that, if you set them up nice. They do squash together a little bit, so if you happen to notice that one's a little longer than the other, you can try to compress them. Okay?
We've got brand new boots. Super important, because the boots are usually what goes bad. Start spraying out grease, they let moisture in, your axle goes bad. It comes with a brand new locking nut. Super important. You want to make sure that you replace that, obviously. You've got your splined end. You've got a brand new locking clip here. This is the part that presses into your transmission. With all that said, as you can tell, this is a quality axle. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be great to install this into the vehicle, so I'm going to go ahead and do it. If you need this or any other part, you can always check us out 1AAuto.com. Thanks
Okay, friends. It's go time. Let's start getting this axle back in here. You'll notice on the end of your axle where it presses into the transmission, you have this little clip. It feels like it's loose. Maybe you think it's broken. It's not. When you get this into the transmission, as you're pressing in, it's going to try squishing down, and then once it gets to the spot inside the transmission where it can spread back out, that's going to be what locks your axle in. That's why we had such a hard time popping it out because of this little clip right here. It's a blessing and a curse. Okay? If your axle doesn't have this on it, whether it's your old axle or your new axle, whatever you're dealing with, or if it's bent or just doesn't seem like it's got as much spring retention as you need, you're going to want to replace it. This is a brand new axle, so I'm not worried about it. It looks like it's in great condition, as I would hope, being new.
I'm just going to push this a little bit out of the way. When I put in my axle, the seal itself, the rubber part, is going to rub right on this area right here, so you want to make sure that it's clean of any debris, scuffs, scratches, dings, maybe you bounced it off the ground trying to lift it up. This looks great. I'd say we're clear to install it.
Just going to bring it over. Try to be careful for the rubber part of the seal. Okay. Here we go. It feels like it's getting ready to go in. Okay. For this next part, I like to keep the nut on there. I'll show you why. The end of the axle is threaded. Okay? That's how your nut threads on. You're going to use a hammer to give this a couple of bonks. I like to use a rubber hammer. Obviously it's not going to end up damaging the threads. If you don't have access to one and you're using a regular hammer. Well, use your old nut, of course. Don't use your new one because it's going to damage it. I'm just going to use a rubber hammer and I'm going to give it a couple of bonks, but I'm going to protect those threads as much as I can. Just in case the unforeseeable happens and they get mangled, the nut's going to protect me from that. Here we go.
Okay? It kind of made an audible sound. It sounded different than the first couple of wacks. It went from a light bonk to a heavy bonk, so I just say we got it done. It looks pretty good. We'll give it a little tug, not too much because we can separate the universal joint there, or the CV joint. That feels really good so I'd say we're clear to move onto the next step.
Okay, so I read a little bit of copper never seize. What I want to do with this, I'm not going to do it yet, but what I want to do with it, so I'm going to spray inside here. I'm going to get this nice and lubricated. I'm going to spray either on the splines of the axle, or even better, inside the splines of the wheel bearing. Okay? That way there everything can be lubricated and it can move around. As for now what I want to do, though, is I'm going to put a little bit of this copper never seize right inside the bearing here, so it's going to come spraying out. I'm going to put on my safety glasses. It's aerosol based. There we are. I'll set this aside.
Now we're going to take our axle, we're going to put it inside the hole right there, get everything lined up. There our new nut. Okay. We want to be careful at this point because when we relieve pressure from this, what can happen is the knuckle can drop further than what it needs to and you can put pressure on your flex hose right here. You don't want to put any tears on it, so whatever you need to do to get the axle so we can flex. Get down in there just like that. If you need to turn your wheel bearing a little bit to get the splines lined up, you could do that. Okay. We're cruising along here.
Now what we need to do is we need to get our pry bar inside here. We're going to lower down the lower control arm. It's going to bring down our knuckle a little bit. We should be able to slide this right in. Before we do that, we'll grab our copper never seize again. Safety glasses. Good to go. Let me grab my pry bar. Come around this way a little bit. I'm just going to try to press down. Hopefully I can get my knuckle down low enough that I can get my strut in there. Sometimes it can be a little difficult. Obviously, watch for pinch points. Safety first. I can't see what you're doing. Just get stuff wiggling around here a little bit.
I've got my jack. I'm going to put it underneath the ball joint area and try to jack this up. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of maneuverability here, a bit of brute force. Make sure it's lined up, and it is. It's going. It's just a nice tight fit.
Okay, so now that I've got the knuckle pushed all the way up and the hole for the knuckle and the strap are lined up, I can use my pinch bolt, you can use a little bit of thread locker if you'd like. It's up to you. I'm going to wear my safety glasses, of course, because I'm using a gun here. We're going to torque that down. Next, what we can do, put that on there. We'll get our jack out of the way here. We'll go get that torque spec and we'll be able to move along.
For the pinch bolt right here, you want to go 66 foot pounds with your 15mm. There we are. just going to hit it one more time real quick. Torqued 66 foot pounds with my 15mm.
Okay, let's get our sway bar link. There we are. We've got our nut. 15mm Okay. I'm just going to hold the backside there with some locking pliers. Tight. Perfect. All right, let's move along.
Okay, we've got our axle nut. I'm just going to start it on here. Give it a few good threads. Make sure it's going on. Now we're just going to blast this on, but we don't want to go too tight. We just kind of kind of want to get it so it's close to the bottomed out and then stop, because we're going to torque this down. Here we are. 32mm socket. It looks like it's getting pretty close. Okay. I'm going to leave it there for now. We'll go ahead and torque it down and that'll get it to the correct specifications. You don't want to over tighten this, ruin the bearing we just put in there. Let's move it ...
Let's take off that stabilizing lug nut that we throw on there. Okay. We'll grab our wheel, bring it over. We're just going to lift it right up with our leg. Use our ab muscles. Hold the wheel. Put our lug nut back on here. I'm going to grab the other three.
Time to go ahead and tighten up these lug nuts. 100 foot pounds. We're going to go in a crisscross pattern, never around the circle. Let's do it again. Tight. We're going to go ahead and torque this down, 266 foot pounds. Using my 32mm socket. Getting close. Tight.
Thanks for watching. Visit 1AAuto.com, your place for DIY auto repairs, for great parts, great service, and more content.
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Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!
We're going to be working on this 2001 Ford Focus. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to take the tire off. One thing to note, this has these little caps that go over the lug nuts. There's two that are missing on this vehicle, regular ones are 19 millimeter, but because the caps are missing, we're going to have to use an 18 millimeter socket to get those off.
So we'll use a 19 millimeter socket and a breaker bar. Just crack these free before we put the vehicle up. Now I'll switch to the 18. These are really tight, normally they shouldn't be this tight. We're using a two post lift to raise and support the vehicle. You can use a jack and jack stands. Now we'll take these lug nuts off, use a little ratchet and an 18 millimeter socket. Take this last lug nut off, take the tire off. Just hit it a couple times.
This one's kind of tight so we're going to hit it off with a hammer. So I put one lug nut on, that's to prevent the wheel from going falling off when I hammer it off with a dead blow. And I'm going to hit right here really hard on the tire and it will pop right off. Now we'll take this lug nut off and pull the wheel off.
Keep in mind that whenever you're doing any front end repair or replacing any front end components, you're going to want to go to a local shop and have your alignment performed, or at least checked. That way, that'll keep your tires from wearing prematurely.
Before we go to take the tire rod off, we want to use some rust penetrant on the nut right here, and also back here. They've been on there for a while, so it'll be pretty rusty. I'm going to loosen this nut up on the back here, I just want to crack it free. This is the nut for the adjuster that keeps the adjustment for the alignment on the front toe of the vehicle. We'll use a 22mm wrench. We could use a 7/8 wrench, but 22 fits a little bit better. We'll just crack it free just like that. We're going to take this nut off up here. We're going to use a 15mm wrench, and there's a little spot on the top that I can put a torque spit, a T30. I'll use that to hold the stud from spinning. If you had an impact gun, you could take it off with that. Put our wrench on first. Then we're going to put this on tighten and that's just going to hold the stud. Then we'll loosen the nut.
Okay, now that that nut's loose, take that off. I'm going to take a hammer and separate the stud from the front knuckle. Just tap it down, just like that.
Next thing you're going to want to do when you take this outer tire rod off, you're going to want to count how many threads there are, so every time you go around, that's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 12 and a half. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to take a marker, write down 12.5. That way when I go to put the new one on, I'll tighten it as many turns, and that'll bring the alignment closer to where it needs to be, so that you may not actually need an alignment when they go check it. It may be right on target.
Here's our old part. Here's our new part from 1AAuto.com. As you can see, this shape is the same. It comes with a new nut. The bottom is the same. Get yours at 1AAuto.com and you'll be ready to rock and roll.
Now we're going to put the new one on. We're going to count our turns: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 and a half. Then we'll twist this like that. Then we'll line the stud up here. Spin that in there. Take the nut and spin this one. Now we're going to tighten this nut down. I'm going to use a 16mm socket and a ratchet. If the stud was spinning on you, and this nut would not go down, what you can do is take a pry bar, go underneath the stud right here, and just tighten it up that way, or you could even put a little jack and jack up the car right there, just lightly, just to get stat stud to stop spinning. We're going to tighten this nut up.
We're going to use a torque wrench and a 16mm socket. We sell these torque wrenches at 1AAuto.com. We're going to torque it to 35 foot pounds. We're going to tighten this tie rod end lock nut. We're going to use a 22mm wrench. The torque spec on this is 46 foot-pounds, but I don't have the ability to torque it with a torque wrench, so just do the best you can. Snug it up. It's good.
So this wheel and tire when coming off the vehicle actually took a lot of effort to get it off. One of the reasons why is because of the two dissimilar metals corroding. You had the metal from the hub and also the aluminum from the wheel corroding together. So we're going to take a wire brush, just lightly on the wheel go around and clean that up a little bit. You don't want to do too much. You really don't want to sand down the wheel and cause any damage to the wheel but just get a little bit of that off. Just like that and then over on the hub we can go all around the hub, clean all this corrosion off of here, and this will help getting the wheel on and off. One of the things to help prevent this from happening is using a little bit of anti-seize lubricant. I don't like to use a whole lot of this, just a little bit, and only on instances where it's really bad so we'll just put a little bit on there then next time we take the wheel off it will be easier.
Now we're going to throw the wheel up and it went right on. Put our lug nuts on, just tighten these lug nuts. I'm going to torque these lug nuts with a 19 millimeter socket and a torque wrench to 98 foot pounds. We sell these torque wrenches at 1AAuto.com. You're going to do it in a cross pattern so that it tightens the wheel properly. And I'll switch to my 18 millimeter socket for these other lug nuts.
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