How to Replace a Front Wheel Bearing

hey guys chrisfix here today we're working on a 2007 Mercury Mountaineer and I want you to listen real quick that rumbling noise is a bad wheel bearing and what it's causing it's causing abs and traction control light as well because in that wheel hub assembly is the ABS sensor so you can see the ABS and traction control lights are on as well as that little wrench in the information center so I'm going to go scan the computer real quick and it'll get the exact codes and will verify that the front driver side wheel bearing is no good so I'm going to hit the read codes button I'm going to do an all system module check and we'll let that go and see what codes we get okay so we have a few codes we want to check out first one code see one two three three you can see the frequently reported fix is to replace the left front wheel bearing assembly check out this other one see one one five five left wheel bearing assembly replacement again so using a scan tool and more advanced vehicles is a possible method to check the wheel bearing in this case since the ABS is built into the wheel bearing and the ABS is no longer functioning it's going to let you know when the wheel bearings bed now let's Jack the car up and physically check the wheel bearing for play so with the vehicle safely supported on jack stands and I use the Jack as extra protection and with the rear tires blocked off so the car won't roll we could go check out the front wheel bearing and make sure that is our problem I'll show you the player really quickly and I have a video on how to diagnose a bad wheel bearing so if you want to make sure just go check out that video real quickly but obviously this bearing is shot so to replace this wheel bearing I'll be using a brand new memo tech wheel bearing hub assembly it comes with everything you need including the ABS harness and best of all it's going to get this car back on the road so let's go install it so this process is going to apply to mercury Fords and pretty much any vehicle that is front-wheel drive and has a bolt in hub bearing assembly the first step is going to be get the center cap out if you get it out without taking the wheel off great we're going to take the wheel off and pop it out reason why is because you're going to have to get to the axle nut so we'll remove the tire you just want to get behind here and pull that metal ring out watch your face but that doesn't pop out and hurt you and once that metal ring is out just get a flat head screwdriver lightly pry it and that will pop right out so now we'll put the tire back on and throw on a couple of lug nuts so I put on three lug nuts now we're going to lower the tire onto the ground now to remove the axle nut in here we're going to be using one of these axle nut sockets this is a 32 millimeter now when getting an axle nut off these things are on there tight so you're going to need a breaker bar and then maybe even a cheater bar on your breaker bar it really depends if you have air tools use the air tools will make it nice and easy to get off I'm going to try using the breaker bar first okay that's not that bad sometimes these things are a real pain to get off that actually wasn't that bad now with that loosened we could raise the vehicle take the tire off and move on to the next steps after taking the tire off I always slide the tire underneath the car for extra safety so now we can take the axle nut off the rest of the way you might need to take a screwdriver and put it in the slots of the rotors to hold your brakes in place so just stick the screwdriver right in there and I'll give you enough resistance take that right off again air tools would make this a lot easier but if you don't have this just goes to show you can do it without air tools there we go got the axle nut off the next step is to take off the brake caliper and rotor we're going to do all this in one step so we don't have to remove the brake pads and all we need to do is remove the two caliper bracket bolts ones right up here and the other ones right down here so now I'm going to use a 21 millimeter run a breaker bar break the top bolt loose break the bottom bolt loose with both bolts loose now we can take them out all the way with our ratchet good and we'll go to the top here the top bolt up now we're going to add a bucket slide the bucket underneath and this is where we're going to put our hole brake caliper and brake rotor assembly and we'll leave it just like that so with the wheel straight and not at an angle get a big hammer and we're going to hit the axle stud inwards you don't want to hit directly on this so get your axle nut screw it on just so that's flush and you can see the axle is moving inwards a little bit and that's just going to break the axle free so when we try to remove the bearing hub assembly it won't be stuck to the axle good now we have just three bolts holding the bearing hub assembly in so you can see here there's one there's two and on the other side there's three right there always try to make things easier for yourself and work with the car so to get more access to the bolts will turn the knuckle now we're going to crack the two hub bolts on this side loose with the breaker bar because they're going to be really tight we'll do the bottom bolt first and the socket is a fifteen millimeter good now we'll do the top good and now we could use our ratchet to remove the bottom bolt completely good and now we can do the same for the top bolt loosen that up good now the other bolt is on the other side so we're just going to turn this we'll loosen it with our breaker bar and then we could go in there with our ratchet and loosen it up the rest of the way so all three bolts are out of the bearing we're going to push this this way so it's straight now we have this slide hammer kit you can rent this for free at your auto parts store you can buy it it's a very useful tool to have the link in the description to where you get it and you just want to get one of these this mounts right up to the hub slides right in then you use your lug nuts tighten it down all the way and once these are tightened down all the way we'll put our slide hammer on it you know the slide hammer just screws right onto this and then all you need to do is yank this as hard as you can multiple times and it'll pop the hub right off before we go yanking the hub off don't forget to remove the ABS sensor right here so just go in here remove that wiggle this this should come out just like so and now that that's disconnected we could pull the hub bearing assembly out now this is being really stubborn so we're going to use some penetrating fluid right at that seam there where the hug meets the knuckle if my home made penetrating fluid doesn't work I don't know what will listen to that sizzle okay here it comes okay and that's what happens when you let this dealership replace your hub bearing assembly this bearing was replaced before and I would have had no trouble getting it off if they just add a little bit of anti-seize on top of that the replaced bearing went bad quickly so they must have used a junk bearing which is why we're replacing it with a good one I don't want this to discourage you this was the most difficult bearing I've ever had to take off but we still got it off with a hammer and some penetrating fluid we're going to be using a nice ease on the back of the new bearing that way it'll actually come out if it ever needs to be replaced again which it probably won't but you never know and that's all it takes a little bit of anti-seize right on there and right on here and that would have popped right off no problem instead I had to spend forever trying to knock that thing off now on this surface you want to get some sandpaper something a little bit abrasive and just sand it down a little bit just going to clean off the surface make sure it's smooth you can use like a 400 or 600 grit in this case I'm just using this abrasive sponge it's like a scotch-brite type thing once you get the outside clean don't forget the inside you're just removing any of that rust any unevenness again we're going to take our anti-seize and we're going to put some right on these threads here that'll just prevent that from locking up that didn't lock up but just in case next time it'll be easy to pop the axle out the other thing we want to go in here just a little bit of anti-seize around the whole edge and that just prevents binding of the metals so we have the ABS sensor from the old bearing our new bearing comes with a nice new ABS line and that's what we're going to replace it with so right up here there's an 8 millimeter screw take that out this will pop off just pop it out of here over here we'll need a screwdriver sit your flathead screwdriver in here pop this lip open like so pull it up this just pops out and then it goes up into the engine bay so we're up in the engine bay if we look down here here's our ABS wire we could pull this all the way through follow the wire to where it attaches the pigtail and then we have the pigtail right here and you just push down the tab with your thumb and remove it just like that now with the ABS wire disconnected and remove we could put our new hub bearing in when installing the hub bearing pay attention to which side the ABS wire is coming out of just slide it on give it a little wiggle to get it on the spindle here might help to hold up the axle so you can slide this in and you can see our ABS line is right to the side here that's where we want to be it's going to click in right in here leave that for now right now we want to make sure these holes line up so I have our three wheel bearing bolts and you can see the head lock tight on them so I'm going to put some blue which is removable lock tight right where the red was just like so and that just prevents vibrations from loosening them up we're also going to talk them down to 75 foot-pounds of torque so we'll start with the top one here make sure it lines up just write it in by hand and actually go in pretty far by hands assuming that you have this aligned properly there we go the next one will do is the bottom one good and the last one will do is all the way on the other side okay so now we're going to get our torque wrench and we're going to torque all three of those bolts down to 75 foot-pounds one that's two and then for the third one we'll turn the wheel and that's three the new bearing is in so with that torqued into place now we can run our ABS wire that pops into there and this let's mount it right to here so the next thing is we're going to snap it into here so this gets snapped in here this goes right here just like that now we're bringing this up here snap this right in and this goes up into the engine apartment so we'll come up into the engine compartment grab our ABS wire that'll snap right in it's good now with the wheel bearing bolted in and the ABS wire connected let's get the brakes back on now we have our two caliper bolts see where the red loctite was at some blue loctite just line the calper up with the bolt and tighten it to the same thing for the bottom bolt get in this place and hand tighten it now once both bolts are in place tighten them down with the ratchet the same for the bottom once we're done tightening the caliper bolts we could torque them down to 100 foot pounds each do the bottom first and the top now I don't know if you saw it but my greasy hands got onto the brakes here so you want to make sure you clean that off before you put everything together now just snug down your lug nuts before we lower the car into the ground then we'll lower the car on the ground and torque the lug nuts to a hundred foot-pounds and then we have one last step you want to get your new axle nut and we're going to put it on and torque it down I like to add a little bit of blue loctite in here just get that on there now we're going to grab our torque wrench and we're going to tighten this down to 190 foot-pounds okay that's how you change the wheel bearing in a Mercury Mountaineer or Ford Explorer but this wheel bearing hub assembly replacement will be similar on all vehicles that use a Bolton wheel bearing that has an axle that goes through it so you'll have to remove the axle nut so we have one last detail line it up so it's even just give it a pop like that all done now we could go for a ride so we're going for a ride the ABS and traction control lights both went off the wheel bearing is nice and silent and that's a job well done hopefully this video is helpful if it was remember to give it a thumbs up also if you're not subscribed hit that subscribe button what are you waiting for in the description are going to be all the tools I used in this video as well as the bearing and at the bottom of the video are going to be three similar videos just in case you want to see it on a different car or if you have a press bearing you

Channel: ChrisFix

Views: 8,529,864

Keywords: how to replace a wheel bearing, how to replace a front wheel bearing, how to replace a rear wheel bearing, how to replace a car bearing, car bearing, wheel bearing replacement, how to replace a wheel bearing hub assembly, wheel bearing noise, chevy wheel bearing, honda wheel bearing, wheel bearing replacement chevy, wheel bearing replacement Ford, wheel bearing replacement toyota, wheel bearing replacement honda, wheel bearing replacement subaru, wheel bearing hub replacement

Id: fe_WtKIKlYA

Length: 16min 26sec (986 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2015