2002-08 Dodge Ram 1500 Front Wheel Bearing & Hub Assembly TRQ BHA53944

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Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1AAuto. I want to help you save time and money repairing and maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20-plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly; that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

In this video, we're going to show you how to replace the front hub on this 2004 Dodge Ram. This is a four-wheel drive truck, same as most 02 to 08 vehicles this generation. Tools you'll need: Various both standard and metric sockets, ratchet, breaker bar, and a pipe for some leverage, (the bolts for the hub are quite tight usually), sledge hammer if you have some problem with your rotors, a large screwdriver, small pry bar, wire brush, large C-clamp, penetrating oil, jack and jack stands, and a torque wrench.

First you want to remove your wheel. If you're just using hand tools, start with the vehicle on the ground, loosen the lug nuts first, then raise it, secure it with jack stands and then remove the wheel. I've got air tools; I'm going to use them. These are either 7/8 or 22 millimeter; both will work. The next step, you may want to loosen your brake fluid cap a little. Okay, in the interest of keeping this video a little bit on the short side, I'm going to just kind of go through taking the brakes apart in 3x speed. You can probably gain enough here if you don't quite know how to get them apart or if you want to see this part of the video in real time, just check out our other videos for the Dodge Ram front brakes. Again, like I said, you can probably get enough to understand how to get the brakes apart just from this. Enjoy it even though it's a little quicker and then we'll get to the hub.

Now you're going to want to remove the axle. You want to remove the hub nut, which is a 35-millimeter bolt. If you're using hand tools, you will need to do this before you take the tire off. Lift the car up, take the center cap off, take the lug nuts off, take the center cap off, put the lug nuts back on, put the car back down, and then while it's on the ground use your hand tools to loosen up the nut. Then you can lift the car up. I'm just going to use my impact wrench and it helps me to zip the nut right off.

Now you want to separate the axle from the hub. You just want to use a hammer and give it one good hit. That'll tell you if the axle is free from the hub. You just hit it once and watch it really close and the axle should go right in. You won't need an axle pole or anything if that happens. You see I hit it and the axle goes in so I'm all set. Now what you want to do is get a pry bar and go way up like that. Pull your axle right off like that and your axle's out. Okay, now with the axle out there's three 18-millimeter bolts. You see one right down there, one up here, and there's one over here you can barely see. Before you actually take those bolts out, you want to disconnect your ABS sensor if you're vehicle has ABS. The connection is up there. Pull the clip out of the fender. There's a little tab that you have to press with your thumb and then disconnect it and pull it free from all the clamps that hold it to the brake hose and stuff.

We are going to use our 18-millimeter socket. Okay. Actually I'm going to loosen this. Again, be controlled with your pole. Use my pipe here. More leverage. Okay, these bolts are very tight. They also have a Loctite on them so just the combination of your 18-millimeter socket, your ratchet handle or a breaker bar, and a piece of pipe for some leverage and can get them loose. Once you have the bolts out you can actually cut them out pretty easy. Okay, wire brush. Clean everything up here a little bit. You want to feed your harness through and then the harness up, over like that, put your hub in. Prepare your bolts. Feed it through the top hole and do your best. Get the backing complete on there and then start into the hub.

Just make sure our harness is out of the way. I'm just going to use my impact wrench and just tighten this top one up a little bit. I'm not going to tighten it up. I'm just going to get it in there. Make sure it's nice and secure. Okay, I'm going to start my other two bolts and this should still be loose and moving around. I'm just going to fast forward here as I start the other two bolts and then I'll hook up my harness. Make sure you put it back into all the little grommets and clips that hold it in place so it doesn't chafe against anything. Then reconnect it and then I'll preliminarily tighten up all the bolts. The next thing you see me doing is torquing the bolts.

Now I'm going to use the torque wrench to get the top one. For the top one if you use a nice, long extension like that, loop it through from the back. Torque them to 100 foot pounds. Okay, we'll just fast forward again as I torque up the other two bolts. Now we're just going to take our axle. Put it right up in here, feed it into the hub. Turn it a little bit so you know where to push it with the hub. Push it right in. Now I'm going to take my hub nut and using my impact wrench just to get it on there, not really to tighten all the way up yet. Okay, now I'm going to grab hold of my CV joint on the inside. You go up on the top, pull your joint in as much as you can. Going on to the axle and then push it all the way on. Make sure it fits on there.

Okay, just in the interest of making this video a little bit on the shorter side, I'm just going to fast forward through putting your brakes back together. If you'd like to see this video or this part of the video in regular speed just check out our other videos for the Dodge Ram front brakes and you can see this whole part of the repair being done in regular speed. Now with everything back together, put your wheel back on. Don't put the center cap back on. Thread your lug nuts on there, and then just preliminarily tighten them up and then lower your vehicle down. Your hub nut, 185 foot pounds; my poor torque wrench only goes up to 150, so there's 150 and 25. Okay now raise the vehicle back up, take the lug nuts off, put the center cap back on, and preliminarily tighten up the lug nuts. Let the vehicle back down and torque the lug nuts to a 120 foot pounds using a star pattern. Very important, you've had your brakes apart so make sure before you drive the vehicle, pump your brakes a bunch of times, make sure the brakes are working correctly.

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Okay, friends. One of the first things we need to do is safely raise and support the vehicle so that the suspension is hanging. The best way to do that is right underneath the frame. Once you've done that, remove all five lug nuts and remove the wheel. Now I'm going to take a nice pry bar, and I'm going to come in between the caliber and the rotor itself and just try to push in the pistons a tiny bit. Perfect.

Now we're going to take the caliber off. We want to make sure we don't put a tug on our flex hose when the knuckle comes down. It's good to have something hanging off the frame so you can hang the caliber once it's off. There we are. Go ahead and set that so it's going to be safe.

Let's get the rotor off of here. So we're going to take off our tire rod and nut here. So just go ahead and bend out that little clip. Remove the nut. I like to leave it on a couple threads. Now we're going to bonk right along here to separate the tire rod from the knuckle. Set this up here.

Now let's go ahead and take off our axle nut using a 36-millimeter socket. Now you just want to make sure the axle can move in and out of the wheel bearing. If it can't, you can, of course, put the nut back on a few good threads. Give it a couple of loving bonks until it does.

Now looking at the backside of the knuckle, along where the axle connects into it, you're going to see three mounting bolts for the wheel bearing itself. There's one here, one on top, and then one towards the front. Remove all three. There's one. Okay. Let's go ahead and pull those bolts out. There we are. Now we can come up here and grab this bearing. There it is, friends.

Now that the bearing is off, there's something that we need to pay attention to, and that's all the corrosion that's along the area right here. You need to scrape that off. You don't want anything left on there. Using a scraper, or a chisel, or whatever you have, maybe even a nice brush, get inside there, and that's going to be great. Clean it down. The copper Never-Seez.

Now let's go ahead and get our new wheel bearing up onto here. Okay. Start in all three bolts. I like to use a tiny bit of red Threadlocker. Now that we have all three of them started in, let's go ahead and snug them up. Let's go ahead and torque these bolts to 122-foot pounds. Let's get the tire rod stud back in here. Put on our nut. Snug it up. Let's go ahead and torque this to 45-foot pounds. Once again, we need to continue on to make sure that it's lined up. It looks like it could go a little further. Put a cotter pin in there. Make sure you peen it over. Make sure you clean up the backside of your rotor where the mating surface is. Let's apply a little bit of copper Never-Seez on the bearing. Go ahead and put your rotor up on there. And we're going to grab the caliber, start it on there as well. Use a little red Threadlocker if you're not going to be replacing your nut, but it is recommended to replace the nut. Now we're going to need to torque down the nut. To do that, you can either put the wheel on without the center cover and then torque the nut, or you can just use a nice, long bar, come across the studs like this, lock it in, and torque it. Now let's torque it to 185.

Let's go ahead and start the caliper on there. There we are. Start in both of your bolts. It's a good idea to use a little bit of Threadlocker on these. Okay, let's bottom these out. Now let's torque these to 138-foot pounds.

Now it's going to be time to get the wheel up on here. We're going to snug up the lug nuts, and we'll torque it to 130-foot pounds. Torqued. We're just going to go ahead and pump up that brake pedal. That feels good.

Okay. So now, at this point, what you want to do is take it for a road test, and of course, get it down to your local alignment shop.