Hey, friends, it's Len here at 1A Auto. Today, I'm working on a 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser. I'm going to show you how to replace the left front wheel bearing. It's going to be a very easy job and 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, so what we're going to do first is we're going to take off these six lug nuts, 21 millimeter. You can use a ratchet and a socket if you want or your air gun. There we are. Get the wheel broken free. Drop this down, wheel out of the way. Okay, so now we're just going to try to push back the caliper a little bit. I'm just going to go like this. Just try to push back these pistons best I can. This is just to release the pads from the rotor. Cool. Okay. The rotor can move around freely. If we need to, we can push them back a little further in a minute. Now we're going to remove the caliper. One of the first things we need to do is take off this clip right here.
Generally, cutters work pretty good for this to grab onto it. I'm going to grab some in a second here. There we are. Now this line can move around. It's very important so when you take your caliper off, it can move around a little bit. I'm going to use a 12 millimeter up here on this bolt, that's going to remove this bracket so it can move around. Get the socket off of there. There we are. Okay. The bracket can move around freely. I'm going to take these off right here. If it's easier and you wanted to, you could take off the outer tie rod end. I'm probably going to do that. That way there I can turn this and I can get to those bolts easier. Let's grab some cutters. There we are. Just wiggle this around.
If you have a new cotter pin, you don't have to worry about saving this one, but if you don't, you're going to have to try to save it. We do have new ones, so I'm not super worried about it. This one doesn't look like it's coming out, so I'm just going to cut that off of there. Tie rod and nut is a 19 millimeter. There we are. Took that off of there. 19 millimeter. I'm just going to give the knuckle a couple bonks. I want to be careful not to damage the threads on the tie rod or hit the boot. Super important, you don't break your boot open. If you do, you'll have to replace the outer tire rod end.
All right. Around this way. There we are. Now, when we go to install this, we're going to have to make sure that we get that cotter pin out of there. Okay. Because we want to put a new one in there. We'll set this aside. Now we can pivot this and we can do what we need to do. We're going to use a 17 millimeter to remove the two bolts for the caliper to the knuckle. Same thing to the other one. At this point, the caliper may come down. You want to make sure you hold onto it so it doesn't fall down and hang too far.
Bolt number two, it's the same as the first. We'll set it aside with the other one. Now, I want to hang the caliper, not by its flex hose, obviously, So, just grab whenever you've got, a coat hanger or something that everybody would have. There you really. We can remove our front rotor. Okay, so now we're going to take off this cover right here, it's just the tin cover, so you don't want to completely destroy it. Along the hub and the cap itself, there's a little lip. There's kind of a little a gap. Hopefully, you can try to get a pry bar or screwdriver or whatever you've got in there. You just kind of want to get in between, break it free. If this bends a little bit, that's okay because you can just bend it back if you have a pliers or anything like that. Like I said, you just don't want to damage it too bad because it needs to create a good seal. Okay. I'm going to see if I can get someone else in there. It looks like we're pretty close. Just get this here. There's our cover. It's not too damaged.
I can try to straighten that out a little bit. When I go to re-install this, I'm just going to use a little bit of RTV or gasket maker It's just going to help keep moisture out of here and protect this nut area. I'll set the cap aside.
We're going to remove this cotter pin. I'm going to use my cutters. Once again, if you have a new cotter pin, you can go ahead and cut it. If you don't, you need to try to save it because you do need to have the cotter pin in there. I have access to new cotter pins, so I'm going to cut this. Just watch your eyes. It's a little locking thing. Okay. It just slides over the nut there, and then you line up the slots with the hole and put your cotter pin through. It makes it so this nut can't loosen up when you're driving down the road. Not that it should, you're going to have a torque down anyway. It's just precautionary. We'll set this aside because we're going to reuse it.
Now we're going to take off this nut, so I'm going to grab the socket we need and we'll move along. We're going to take off this nut right here, 36 millimeter. It's easiest with an air gun. If you don't have access to an air gun, what you're going to want to do is you're going to grab a bar, you're going to bring the vehicle closer to the ground, and set this up against your lug studs just like this pretty much, so when you go to loosen up this nut, your hub won't be able to turn. Okay? And you can use your 36 with a long ratchet. Break it free. It'll come loose, With an air gun, you don't need to worry about that. Just hold this. Easy peasy. Okay.
Now you want to try to push your axle in. This one feels like it moves a little bit, so we know we're in good shape on that. I'm going to go with a little bit of penetrant here. Let it do its job. It's going to hang out in there. Oh, yeah. So, that's moving freely. Now when we go to remove the bearing, the bearing will come off and we don't have to worry about being stuck on the axle.
Now we're going to move ahead. We're going to take out these bolts right here, these holding the bearing. So I'm going to grab my wrench because obviously I can't do anything else. I'm grab a wrench. I'm going to wrench these out.
Okay, so to remove these bolts, you're going to use a 17 millimeter wrench. Just put it in behind the hub, just like this. Set this all the way at the end so it can't turn on you. Now you can do a couple of things here. You could do something like a rubber mallet, bonk, bonk, give it a couple bonks. That's the way I'm going to do it. Other people would say you can use a pipe if you can slide it over there. There's multiple ways you can do it. This would be the safest way. Wear your safety glasses, of course, just in case something goes flying. A lot of times the wrench likes to come flying off, and I'm just give a couple of loving bonks here. We're just going to go like this. See if we can get it to break free. Okay, that one's free. We're going to do the same to all four, and then we'll go ahead and start to continue to remove all of them. Just got to get that on over the rust.
So now we're just going to use the open end of our wrench. You definitely don't want to try to use a ratchet wrench here because once this comes out as it can, you're probably not going to be able to get your wrench out of there and you're going to be crying. Once it's loosened up, you can just grab it by hand. So that one's all the way out. It's not actually physically going to come out of the bearing. Your new bearings going to come with those, so you're just going to get it to that point. Leave it there, move along. Do all four of them the same way. Then you can move on to the next step.
So we've got all four bolts loose that hold the bearing to the knuckle as loose as they're going to get. You're going to take your hammer and you're going to give this a couple bonks, and you're going to try to break it free. You'll see right along the bearing in the backing plate, you'll start to see a little bit of a gap there. That means it's starting to separate and that's a good thing. Okay, so safety, glasses, hand protection.
I'm going to grab a bigger hammer real quick and easier. So here we go. I got my little hammer. We're starting to see it separate right along here. Now's a great time to throw a little penetrant in there. It's going to make its way right down in, do its thing. Cool. A few more bonks here. Okay. Lug stud. Anybody want one of these? We'll recycle that. Okay. It's still coming off. It's taking its time. If you want to, you can go ahead and put the tie rod in, back in here so it doesn't flop around on you. I mean, it's still going to move around a little bit, but it won't be nearly as bad as what it was. So we'll just keep on keeping on. There we go. Now it's really starting to come off. Try to help it along here. Okay.
What's happening is the bearing itself has a little edge and that's kind of pressed into the knuckle. When you tighten these up, it pulls it into the knuckle and it corrodes all in there, so it's just doing it's been in there for a while. Okay. It's just trying to be a pain. It's all right. We're pretty much at the end here. It almost turned itself in a little bit somehow. Here we are. It's our bearing.
Okay, friends, a quick product comparison for you. Over here, we have our original left front wheel bearing out of our 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser. We just removed it. Over here, we have our brand-new quality 1A Auto part. As you can tell, they're shaped exactly the same. You've got the hat height, same exact height. Super important to make sure that you've got the same depth. If you don't and this one is sticking up a little further than the other one or vice versa, it's going to change the offset of your wheel, which will because alignment issues, steerability issues. We've got six lugs. Super important, make sure you're dealing with the same lug pattern. All right.
We've got the area where our axle comes through. When we removed the old bearing, we remember those bolts didn't want to come out. Well, the new bearing came with them. They even came with a little bit of thread locker on there for you. It comes with a new seal, of course, with all that said, I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a quality part to install into this 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.
Okay. I'm going to use a little parts cleaner directly on rag. Make sure I'm wearing safety glasses here in case anything flies up, hits me in the face. I'm just going to clean out in here the best I can. A lot of times you'll get grease or gunk or who knows what. This little nub, right here, is your abs sensor. It comes through from here, goes through your knuckle. It's wired in. It goes up to your ABS unit, or I guess it actually goes up to your ECM and just tells the computer how fast you're going on this wheel. So, we get that clean. It looks pretty good. I'm going to grab a little sanding disc and I'm just going to clean up along here. Okay, so to clean this up, I like to use something like this. It's a little cleaner tool with a standing disc. You can buy this at 1AAuto.com. It's a really nice tool. All you're going to do is you're going to skim along this, try to make it look nice, fresh metal again so you don't have any big chunks of a rust flaking up.
I'm just feathering the trigger right now. It can go much faster. Just feel along, I don't feel anything flaking up anymore. I'm just going to grab my cleaning rag again. Let's wipe this out. I guess I could've probably cleaned it out after I did that, but it's not too hard to just do it again. No big deal. There we are. Easy peasy. I like to use a little bit of copper spray. I'm just going to put a little bit and I'm going to run it with my gloved finger along in here, and that's just going to help make it, so if someday I have to take this bearing out again for some reason, it's going to want to come out fairly easily.
There we are. We have our backing plate. If you were going to replace this now, it'd be the time to do it. For the purpose of this video, I'm not going to worry about it. I am just going to make sure that there isn't any large flakes along where the knuckle or the bearing are going to ride. If there is, I can just skim it a little bit. Maybe I will. I've got some pretty big flakes, so it wouldn't make sense to clean this up nice and pretty and then have this ruin it for me. Use my same tool.
You'll notice I cleaned it up good. We've still got our little nubs there on the backing plate. That's super important to make sure you don't grind those down. I mean, it's not really going to be integral to the safety of the vehicle or anything, but it just kind of tells you where to line it up with the knuckle. Okay. It makes it so you can't go ahead and do something like this, or like this, or like that because it really only goes one way. Okay. You got your nub, your nub, nub, nub hole, just like that. The reason why this is open like this is because, well that's where your caliper goes, right? It's easy enough to figure out. So, we've got this, I'm going to grab a little bit more copper spray, just going to go right along here, right on the splines of the axle.
Grab my bearing. The backside of the bearing has a magnet. So you want to make sure that you don't set that on anything that's magnetized because it'll mess up the reading for your ABS sensor. So now I'm just going to get this on here. I'll line it up with the backend plate. Everything should mesh together fairly easily. There we are. I'm going to try to start in my bolts here. I'm not going to tighten any of them up until I make sure all of them are started into the knuckle. I've got them all started in, we're going to get them all bottomed out now. I'm going to go crisscross here. I'm going to use the box end of the wrench. Once I get it so it feels like it's snugged up, just give it a couple of bonks, safety glasses again still. I want to make sure it's nice and tight. Okay. You can't skimp on it. This one on the backend plate is blocking me. Turn the wrench around. There we go. Okay. Tight, tight, tight, tight. All four are tight.
I'm just going to go ahead and put on the axle nut now. So I'm going to take my bar, I'm just going to go straight across the studs just like this. That's going to make it so the hub can't turn while I torque this down. I want to get my torque wrench and we're going to torque this down to 173 foot pounds with my 36 millimeter socket. So here we go, 173 foot pounds. There we are. I'm just going to one more time. Torqued.
So now it's time to put on our new lock. This just slides over the nut. You line up the slot with the hole, put your new cotter pin through. Then, you could choose which way you want to pin it. Some people like to make one of these ears go one way, one go the other. It really depends on what you want to do. It's your prerogative. I'll leave it up to you. Some people will bring it up around the front. Basically, as long as you bend them over and the cotter pin can't come out on its own, and then the axle nut can't unlock on its own, you're doing all right. Okay. That's never going to come off on its own. We're all set.
Now we'll grab our cap. Okay, so I'm just going to use a little bit of a gasket maker here. Just go right along the edge. There we are. We're going to put this right into the hub, just like that. I'm going to grab my rubber mallet, give it a couple of bonks. There we are. Let's make sure it's in. Okay. No moisture is going to get in there. Now, if you want to clean it up, go ahead and cleaned it up. Just go around it, do the best you can. It doesn't have to be anything too pretty. Well, it's your vehicle, maybe you do want it to look pretty. It's going to be hidden though. FYI. Get that out of there. Cool. I'd say that looks decent. It's getting worse the more you touch it, so I'm just going to stop.
We're just going to plug in our ABS wire. Listen for it. Clip. Give it a nice little tug. It feels good. It goes right in these little plastic brackets here. I'm going to push that down in one second here. I'll just get this on there. Okay. I'll just clip these in. ABS wire can't go anywhere. It's not going to get caught on the axle anywhere. It should be good to go. Now we'll put on a little bit of copper Never Seize. Perfect.
We'll grab our rotor and we can move along. All right, we've got our rotor. Slide it right on here. I'm just going to grab a lug nut. I'm trying to put this on as far as I can. This is going to help me make sure that the rotor can't move around on the hub. The more it moves around, the more chances you have of rust flakes falling in between the rotor and the hub, which will because a brake pulsation down the line. We'll just kind of give it a little spin like this. I don't hear any brake grinding. The backing plate isn't hitting up against there. It's very common for it to happen. Maybe you are moving something around, you tweak the backing plate a little bit. This one sounds good. Carefully put it back over.
Grab your mounting bolts. If you want to use a little thread locker on these, you can. It's your prerogative. For the purpose of this video, I'm not going to worry about it. We're just going to turn these all the way in and then we'll torque them down. So now we're going to torque down these two bolts to 91 foot pounds using a 17 millimeter. Okay, I'm going to check them again real quick. Can set our bracket back up. Got the hole for the bolt and then the hole for the ear on the bracket. I'm just going to go like this. You're turn it so there's less pressure. I'm just going to come up here. A bolt like this, you definitely don't need to use thread locker on. It might actually be better to use a little bit of Never Seize if you have access to some, but I'm not going to worry about it for the purpose of this video. I'm going to use my 12 millimeter, tighten this up. Okay.
I'm going to take our line, try to bring it down so we can see the groove. We're going to use this clip. This is going to go through with the a little flippy ear facing our thumb. I'll just try to bring it in. Sometimes, getting these in, it's pretty difficult. I'm just going to loosen this up again real quick a little bit. Maybe that'll let us get some more movement out of this. It wants to set up where we need it, as soon as I let go, it goes back. Okay, now I'm just going to bonk that in with just what I have in my hand. A small hammer would work for this. Okay. Snug this back up. Tight, tight, tight. All that's tight. Okay. We've got this right here, when we took it apart we had to break the cotter pin, so I'm just going to need to drill that out real quick, so I'll do that. Okay, so we got the hole through that. Easy peasy. Now, we'll just clean it off, and we can tighten it down, and put a brand-new cotter pin in there.
So now we're just going to take the tie rod nut. We're going to bottom it out, and then we'll go ahead and torque it down using my 19 millimeter We'll go with the assumption that it doesn't want to tighten down. It's just spinning inside the knuckle there. Something you can do, if you have access to a long pry bar, just apply upward pressure. Be careful, of course, for your axle, wherever you need to go that you're not pressing on your axle. I'm just going to keep moving around until I find a nice safe spot. That'll be all right, I guess. I'm just going to apply upward pressure. There we are.
Now we're going to go ahead and torque this down, and then we're going to have to bring it continually clockwise until we get to the closest slot that lines us up with our locking point. Okay. We're going to torque this down to 67 foot pounds. Okay. That's torqued. Now it's important to pay attention to, like I said before, where the holes are. There's a hole right here, but it kind of lines up with the castle nut, the castle part of the castle nut, so we need to bring it a little further until it lines up. I'm just going to use my ratchet. I'm going to go as far as I feel like I need to here, a little bit more. There we are. Slide that right through.
It's your prerogative how you want to set this. Some people go side to side, one ear to one side, one ear to the other side. Some people go over the top. As long as it's bent and it can't come out on its own, you're doing all right. So you do you booboo. Get that on there. That cotter pin can go nowhere. There's no way that this nut is going to be able to loosen up on its own and the tire rod won't be able to come off causing the wheel to go out of control. So, we're tight, tight, everything's tight coming around here. Perfect.
Clear to move onto the next step. Okay. We've got our caliper on there. Now all you're going to do is you're going to get up inside the vehicle, actually you'll want to make sure that your brake fluid is topped off, of course, I mean that's just generally speaking. And then get inside the vehicle and then just pump up the brake until the brake pedals nice and firm. And then you should be clear to go for a road test.
So when you have all this apart and you have your bearing out of there, a lot of times you're going to want to replace the seal that goes on the back side of the hub up against the bearing. It just kind of protects the inner area of the bearing from getting moisture and debris in there. Some people do, some people don't. It's a good habit to do it. If you have access to the part, you should go ahead and do it.
Okay, so now we're going to get the wheel up on here. I've got a couple lug nuts in my hand. I'm going to take the wheel, put it up against my leg, and I'm going to lift with my leg/ab muscles just like that. I'm going to try not to use my back. I don't want to hurt my back. Go like this, lift this up. There we are.
I'm holding the wheel. Get one lug nut started on there. Number two started on there. Now I can release the wheel and I can grab the rest of my lug nuts. We have all of our lug nuts on. All right. We still have to snug them up. To snug them up, what we want to do is going to snowflake pattern on this. Generally speaking, you can go crisscross, but this is more like snowflake, so you go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Okay. Never go around in a circle. You go ahead and go around and start circle, you tighten it up along this way, it pulls it in, right? You get over to this side, you think you have it tight, you might even torque it down, and it's still cocked off to the side a little bit. You go guy and hit a bump. Boom.
Next thing you know your wheels ready to fall off, okay?. So just go ahead and go crisscross, star pattern, whatever you want to call it. I'm just going to bottom it out, and then we're going to torque them down after. We're going to go ahead and torque down the wheel now to 85 foot pounds with our 21 millimeter socket. We're going to continue in our snowflake pattern or crisscross, whenever you want to call it. Start here, go to the opposite side of the wheel. There we are. We know they're all torqued. If you want to hit him again, hit him again. A small price to pay for a little bit of safety. There we are. Easy peasy.
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