How To Replace A Broken ABS Wheel Sensor Inside A Steering Knuckle

okay so before we begin let me show you what we have here on the gauge cluster as you can see the ABS light is on so I already have the scan tool hooked up to the vehicle and if we take a look I'll read the trouble code here and I'll include a link if you are interested on purchasing a scan tool that can read ABS sensors as well as you could just go to the local auto parts store and they'll do it for free so a left front wheel speed sensor open or short left front wheel speed sensor failure so let's go ahead and take a look now a good location to jack up the vehicle is the front cross member on many Hondas and Acuras they actually have an arrow pointing right to the front cross member very very good solid points out of vehicle so once you remove the wheel as you can see if two lines so really this is the hydraulic line you can quickly tell this is the brake fluid line because look how thick the hosing is but if you take also a look at this line you can see that the electrical connection goes into the vehicle the engine compartment so we know this is the wheel sensor now again on the scan tool let me turn light here it said left left is your driver side right is the passenger side okay so this is a 10 millimeter bolt here so let's go ahead and remove that now this is something I attempted to do around a month ago and you'll see in a moment why I had to stop I was going to continue and wrap up the the repair here but I figured let me do a quick video because this is quite common especially with Hondas and Acuras and as you can see when it took out the sensor it just completely dislodged from the body itself let me just make sure you guys can see this okay so what I started to do is drill out the leftover of the sensor in the knuckle and I just stopped I figured let me at least do a video because you may be worried if I drill too far it can hit the axle right here so what I'm going to do just to give you it's also easier to film a my end but just so you get a better view I'm going to remove this entire knuckle this entire steering knuckle we're just going to remove it the reason behind that is because I want to show on how close you will be to the axle if you try to drill this out on your vehicle so obviously you don't have to remove this by any means you could do it you could just drill it the way it is but let me at least show it on how close you will be to that axle okay before I like to begin I always soak down any part that we're going to remove with some PB Blaster you can always use wd-40 in a case like this this vehicles 16 years old lives in the northeastern United States really nasty winter weather throughout the year and after 16 years sometimes these bolts can be pretty nasty to remove you don't want them to break so just soak everything down with some kind of training oil so let's start by removing the caliper and what you can do is just give it a quick tug with a heavy hammer and that's it and sometimes you'll find a bracket for the brake hose it's a good idea just to put the fastener right back so you know exactly where it is this flips up okay still look to be in good shape [Music] and then you have the caliper bracket which is held in typically there's 17 or 19 millimeter bolts one there another one right there okay good good solid three four pound hammer big help is ratcheting wrenches by the way are awesome they're from Harbor Freight you can typically find them on sale for $20 and they give you a lot of different sizes big time-saver [Music] okay now Honda is known to use these flip type screws in the rotors or in their rotors I should say a lot of manufacturers use them today what you can use as a hand impacts up because they're really really tight think it's ease on this makes the job so easy here we go so as you can see we're very lucky this rotor comes off without a problem which doesn't happen very often especially if you live in a and a winter climate so what you could do you have two six millimeter ends many rotors have these six millimeter ends and all that you do is you go to your local auto parts store you go to home depot lowes so on and so forth and grab two screws that are you want machined that's threaded machine six millimeter machined ends and all that you do is you just slowly turn the screw here and as you turn it you can able strike the hub and push off the rotor if you don't have these six millimeter ends I'll include a link for a wheel bearing replacement we did years ago and that just slowly struck the circumference of the rotor with a hammer you can also use a polar so there's different techniques but if you have these six millimeter ends by far your fastest and easiest bet so now we need to remove the axe and nut from the axle and as you can see there's a little dimple we just need to push back that dimple and remove the axle nut now there's two ways to remove these they're very tight in this case it's a hundred eighty foot-pounds from the factory option one is you can use an impact cordless gun that's what I'm going to use option two is if you don't have one of those before you remove the rotor and the brake pads have someone press on the brake hard and then use a breaker bar and back out this accident okay the key is use a breaker bar without a breaker bar these are really really hard to remove now just in case you don't know what a breaker bar is this is what it looks like it's incredibly long gives you long handle as you can see eighteen and a half inches the accident happens to be 32 millimeters so this is our socket but this is what you're looking at you could pick up one of these from Harbor Freight Amazon for around eight nine bucks [Music] all right just like that okay real nice tool to have for sure and as you can see nice fluid that's what you want to see sometimes you have to tap at the end with a mallet but you just have to be able to move it just a little bit so now I just want to start removing anything that's attached to this knuckle so right here we have a metal brace the brake line or the ABS line I should say so now I'm going to deal with the upper let's up here the upper ball joint and the lower ball joint a lot of different ways you could do this I'll show you the way I'm going to do it just make sure you guys can see this this is the lower ball joint okay so let's start with the upper first so now we need to remove the cotter pin take notice of how this is shape so you have the top at a 90 degree angle okay and then the bottom is just flat 180 degrees again replace these you don't want to reuse them there we go you'd be a little tricky sometimes but there we go okay and then this happens to be a 17 millimeter usually not very tight two options you have to remove this from the upper mount number one is you can use a three pound hammer strike it very very hard eventually it will pop out option two is you can use a surface set this is a lot easier in my opinion you can rent these you can buy one for maybe around 50 55 bucks just make sure you push up the booth let me give you a closer view here okay so you push up the boot around the adaptor then slowly turn this and there you go now this is that was quite easy let's do the lower ball joint typically to look a little bit harder than that but that's all it makes it really really easy using a service set so now we need to remove the steering tight rod again cotter pin so just at my first roadblock is you can see the cotter pin completely snapped off on the front also on the back so we'll need to drill this out and then on the bottom here this is a 17 millimeter and as before you can hit right here with the heavy hammer you don't hit the tire rod itself you want to hit the housing or you can use one of these service tools just make sure you're careful with the boot and just check out the other end and you can also use a tool like this for a tie rod end there you go so we have the upper ball joint the tie rod end and then we just have the lower ball joint and we are home or is it there it is then we're home free [Music] and for this I'm just using a break apart just to break it loose there we go and one last time using the service tool again now I have the okay so now we have the steering knuckle on the bench and what we'll try is to clearly knock this out from the housing if that does not work then we'll just quickly drill it out okay maybe with some luck we can knock this out let's see [Music] that much look let's just drill it out to call it a day okay let's do it now fortunately my cordless drill just died it just doesn't work anymore I have an old-fashioned corded drill so this is going to be a little loud but nonetheless we need to get the job done so here we go [Music] and that was by the way seven sixty fourths of an inch we'll move up to an eighth then just slowly drill out so at this point I'm just trying to clean this up as best as I can and we'll test a new sensor to make sure it fits well little tricky it is a little tricky unless you have very very long drill bits or you remove the dust shield but hopefully this up so after five minutes or so of just drilling and lightly tapping out all the plastic remnants left over the new sensor fits okay awesome so now we just need to put everything back together and we'll be and also clean this up obviously what a mess [Music] now before I tighten up the upper ball joint the tie rod and end the lower ball joint I just want to place everything on load in other words you want to place the suspension on load so I'm going to jack up from the lower control arm just a little bit and then we can torque all of these nuts so the bottom ball joint at 65 foot-pounds this steering tie rod is forty-five upper ball joint 3/5 foot-pounds okay that's 65 foot-pounds and then let me see what this looks like okay we're pretty much we're almost lined up so what I need to do is just rotate this a little bit more that's where lined up with that Center punch so we can fit in a just had a blank here cotterpin now don't loosen up to find that mark you want it tighten it just a little bit more so again you can fit in that Carter pin okay now this is a little hard I'll hold it in a camera but ultimately again you just want to set that up like so so we can cut this off right about here and then on top maybe something like this [Music] something just like this okay okay so again this is 45 foot pounds sorry a little hard with the camera here but you don't okay now with this steering tie rod the cotter pins are just peeled back okay like that and this way just peel back oh okay on this top one again 35 foot pounds if you don't have a torque wrench just make it really snug right there just now fortunately I'm little low on cutter pins and this is all I have really it's out there too big or too small it means this will really be temporary this is all I have and I'll just order another set online just replace it next week but you don't want this sell loose this is okay just make sure it's not loose like this the other ones were nice and tight so but that's okay I'll just replace it next week and we'll be okay then lower this slightly or gently I should say [Music] now before we replace this ABS line let me just show you how close you need to be if you're drilling this out at home without removing the knuckle and take a look at that that's your clearance so obviously you can do it at home just be really really careful take your time coming up here we have been orange connector that's the ABS line or ABS sensor line okay come back dad this goes right now okay so take the new century just to write it in this goes right here just push it in clips on and then take a look we have this opening obviously meets here and then you have a little point that points up that goes right behind it or forward I should say so you know this this a little point sometimes they could be a little tricky to be installing these and you see how that little dimple goes into its mount and then we'll clear the code you should be in good shape now the axle nut is torqued to 180 foot-pounds my case I just used the cordless impact gun and just check the torque with the torque wrench once everything is nice and tight go ahead and just make a little mark here [Music] now the last step is just clearing the code now interestingly enough on the Honda the ABS light is already off I haven't done anything at all but the codes are still in the computer so what you want to do is just clear it and that's it now they've been all cleared now lastly I want to check that the wheel sensor is working so we'll click left front wheel sensor you could generally do this with you could generally do this with any scan tool that reads and deletes ABS codes okay let's go for a quick drive here okay so here we go let's make sure this works and as you can see we're getting a reading from both the left and the right side front wheel speed sensor so that's it we're in good shape guys thank you for watching and we'll see you next time

Channel: CarsNToys

Views: 923,383

Keywords: abs sensor, abs wheel sensor, wheel sensor, broken sensor, anti lock brake sensor, abs, brakes, sensor in knuckle, abs knuckle

Id: LcuAsf3GZOA

Length: 21min 37sec (1297 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2019