2001 GMC Sierra 1500 4 Wheel Drive Front Wheel Bearing & Axle Socket Kit TRQ BHA84973

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Hi, I'm Don from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and the next time you need a part for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

Start off by loosening up these 22mm lug nut covers. We'll fast forward as Don does this. Once those are all loosened up, you can pull the hub cap free. Now, you want to loosen the lug nuts preliminarily, raise the vehicle and remove them the rest of the way, unless you have air powered tools.

You want to remove these two T55 Torx bolts. We'll fast forward as Don does this. Using a large C-clamp, just put it back behind the caliper here, and the other part right here on the brake pad, and just twist this in, and this going to push your caliper piston in and make it easier to pull the caliper off. Then, just remove the C-clamp, and lift your caliper up and off. Set it aside.

Now, using a flat blade screwdriver, just pry out your brake pad, and sometimes the pad is going to be stuck in there, you can use a flat blade screwdriver and hammer to pry it free. Now you want to remove these two 18mm bolts on your caliper bracket, and you can see, we use a piece of pipe for some extra leverage here. We'll just fast forward as he breaks the other one free and removes both of these bolts. Now, slide the rotor off. We'll fast-forward here as we just remove the clips that hold the ABS harness to the frame and steering spindle, and then there's a clip that holds the harness together, so just pull the clip back and disconnect it. Now, using a flat blade screwdriver and a hammer, just pry off your hub cap. You'll need to remove the center hub nut.

A few ways to do this: you can loosen this before you take your brakes apart, have somebody hold the brakes and do it that way, or you could use a large bar and put it between the lug studs to hold it, and then you could break the bar. If you have the benefit of air tools like we do you need an impact wrench to remove it. Then remove these tree 15mm bolts. You want to just use a 15mm wrench and another wrench for some extra leverage.

You just pry out, and once you've broken it free, you can just turn it out the rest of the way with the one wrench. We'll fast forward as Don does this to other two bolts and removes all three of them. Twist the hub nut back into place just a quarter of the way, and then hammer from the back of the hub to break it free. Then remove the hub nut and pull your hub out. On the left is the old hub; on the right is the new one from 1A Auto. You can see they're identical, and they'll fit exactly the same.

Put your backing plate on to your new hub, and then push the hub back into place. Then just put those bolts back in. You may need to hammer the first one to get started. We'll just fast-forward as Don replaces the other two and tightens up all three of those. Then you want to torque those three bolts to 75 foot-pounds each. Now, remove this clip if you left your old one in, and then feed your ABS harness back into place, putting the clips back where they belong and into those brackets. Then reconnect your harness and clip it back up into place.

Replace that washer and your hub nut, and just tighten it back up into place. Push your rotor back into place, and then twist on the lug nut, and this will just hold the rotor in place. Turn the wheel and put the caliper bracket back into place, and replace those two 18mm bolts. We'll fast-forward as Don does this and tightens both of those out. Now torque both of these to 75 foot-pounds.

Now replace your brake pads and use a hammer if necessary to lightly tap that into place. Grease up your caliper bolts. Put the caliper back into place, and slide those slide bolts back in. We'll just fast-forward as Don tightens those up. You want to tighten these to about 30 foot-pounds. Replace your wheel, replace those lug nuts, and tighten them preliminarily. Lower the vehicle and tighten them the rest of the way. Torque the lug nuts in a crossing pattern to 100 foot-pounds, and torque this hub nut to 125 foot-pounds. Put the cap back in place and put it back in. Take your hub cap and just tighten up those bolt caps. After doing work on your brakes, you want to pump the brake pedal until it firms out, and then try a stop test from 5 miles per hour and ten miles per hour. Then you're all set.

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Just take the center cap off. Use a straight blade screwdriver. Get behind here. This is 22-millimeter socket. Take the lug nuts off. Take the wheel off.

I'm gonna take these two caliper bolts out. I'm gonna use a T55 socket. I'm just gonna tap them in because this is pretty rusty. There we go. Cracked it free. Now use the gun. That one came right out. Slide those out. Take a straight blade screwdriver, just pry out on the caliper a little bit, compress the piston. Slide the caliper off. We need to flip it over. It's a good idea to attach it somehow so it doesn't fall. But if you can get it to sit right there, that's good. And just take the old brake pads off. Use an 18-millimeter socket. Take these two caliper bracket bolts off. These are normally on there pretty tight. There we go. All right, those are broken free. Take those out. Grab the bracket, slide it right off. Grab the rotor, slide it off. If it doesn't come off that easy, take a hammer and just hit in these areas. Just try not to hit the studs. Now I'm gonna use a 36-millimeter socket. Take this nut off. Take this washer off as well. This is pretty rusty. I'm just gonna spray a little rust penetrant in there. Let that soak. I'm just gonna use a punch and give it a couple taps, just to make sure this is loose. You don't wanna push it too far, just make sure the axle's separated from the hub a little bit.

Then spray the backside a little bit with some more penetrating oil. Let that soak. Disconnect the connector up top, this little tab. Just slide that. And then the other connector is gonna go down to the hub. Disconnect these. Use a trim tool. Pry up. Pop that out. You need to pop these off, like this. Or if you have trouble with it, you can just pop the retainer open and just slide these out. Sometimes these break right there, and it's just easier to open those up. Slide the wire over here. Use some needle-nose pliers, just squeeze this clip. And slide that out, outta the way.

Now I'm just gonna take these three bolts off on the backside of the knuckle. These go to the hub. I'm gonna use a 15-millimeter socket. Take those out. Just be careful near the CV boot, you don't wanna rip it. There we go. Got them all at least loosened. And take this bolt out. And this top one I can't get that out. I'm just gonna leave that in there. When the hub comes forward, then that bolt will be loose.

Now I'm gonna take a hammer and hit the hub from the backside to try to separate it from the knuckle. Sometimes these are frozen on there pretty good. And it's actually starting to move. You can grab the backing shield and just see if you can wiggle it. Spray a little bit more rust penetrant in there. The axle, a little tap. And just slide it out. And that bolt is just loose. I'm just gonna leave that right there for when I go to reinstall it. Just gonna clean up this knuckle. Just use a wire brush. Clean up some of this rust. Take this backing shield off. Gonna reuse this. If this is rusty, you can clean this up with a wire brush a little bit. I'm gonna use some anti-seize on this area so that if I ever have to take this off again, it comes off easy. Just put a little on the splines too. Slide the wire through the backing shield and install the new hub. Get it lined up. That's good. Get the bolt started. Gonna start with that top bolt. It's kinda hard to get to.

All right, with that bolt started, go ahead and take the wire. We can rerun the wire. And I can either pop that one out or just pop the new one off and reuse the old one. Screwdriver, pop that off. Lock it in place. Put that there. And we'll plug this in right there. And then reposition this, and that's good. And you get the other bolts in. And tighten these bolts up. Move this a little more. All right. Now we're gonna go back to all these bolts and torque them to 133 foot-pounds. And do the same on the other two. Put the washer on. Put the nut on. It is a good idea to replace the nut. But you can reuse it if you have to. And tighten this up. I'm just gonna put the pry bar through here, and then the other end is on the ground. That's gonna prevent the hub from spinning. And I'll torque this nut to 177 foot-pounds. That's good. Now we're gonna clean up this bracket. Just take a straight blade pocket screwdriver. Take these clips off. And there's a lot of rust underneath here. Take a wire brush, clean this up. If you have to, you can use a file. Just be careful, you don't wanna take too much material off. And then take some brake caliper lubricant and just wipe that down. Brake caliper grease there and right there. And take the new caliper slides or anti-rattle clips. Put those on there. Line it up, find the right one. Put it on there. Put a little more brake caliper grease on here, just a thin coat. Just where the pads are gonna make contact. Take a little bit of anti-seize, just go around the hub. We'll see around the center here and spread it out. Nice thin coat. Just gonna take the rotor, put it on backwards. I'm just gonna clean the surface. Use a little brake parts cleaner. And we'll wipe it with a rag with just that protective coating on there to prevent it from rusting. And flip it over, do the same on this side. And wipe it down.

Now take the old caliper bolts. I'll just put a little thread-locking compound on there. And line the caliper bracket up, goes this way. And put the bolts in. Get those lined up. And use the torque wrench, and torque these to 129 foot-pounds. Good. Now install the new brake pads. Now the warning indicator on the inside is gonna go at the bottom and just one, not one at the top. Just slide that in position. And the outside one will have both. That's good. Now I'm gonna compress the caliper. Use the caliper compressing tool. If you have to, use the old brake pad to help you. And just go slow. You don't wanna push these in too fast. This is gonna push the brake fluid through the hoses, through the lines, back up into the master cylinder. All right, those are compressed. Take the tool out. Just make sure the seals look good, the dust seals. Those look good. Now put the caliper back over the pads and line it into the bracket. Take the brake caliper pins, just use a little brake parts cleaner on them. Wipe them off. Take some brake caliper grease. Grease them up. And slide the pins back in position. Get them started. And then tighten them down. Now I'm gonna torque these bolts to these caliper guide pins to 80 foot-pounds. There we go.

And put the wheel back up. Put the lug nuts on. Now I'm gonna torque these lug nuts to 140-foot-pounds in a star pattern to tighten the wheel down evenly. And just go around again, double-check. Install the center cap. Now just pump the brake pedal. There's gonna be an air gap between the caliper piston and the brake pads. Pump that up. Just go slow. And once it feels good, then you're all set. And double-check your brake fluid level in the brake reservoir. Max line's right there. If you give it a little shake, our fluid's right about there.

All right. So, one of the first things you need to do is safely raise and support the vehicle. Once you've done that, you're going to remove all six of your lug nuts. Remove your wheel. Now, the next thing that we would want to do is take a look at our caliper right here. Look all around it to make sure you don't see any moisture coming out. If you see moisture coming out of it, more than likely, it's got a fluid leak. Assuming it looks like it's in good condition, we're going to go ahead and push back the piston a little bit. Grab your small pry bar, come right in between the caliper and up against the pad if you can or even the rotor, and then we're just going to carefully, slowly push this back. So, now the next thing that I would want to do is come right on the backside and I would remove the bolts that are holding the whole caliper bracket to the knuckle itself. There's going to be two of them and they're going to hold on this whole unit. Me, personally, what I like to do is inspect everything as I go. I don't want to just take this off and potentially have bad brakes. So, I'll actually take the caliper apart. I'm going to take off the two bolts that hold the caliper to the bracket and inspect those pads so I know I have good parts.

Once your caliper's off, take a good look. Make sure you don't see any moisture coming around these boots right here. If you see any moisture, you have a brake leak. You need to replace your caliper. Now, we can grab onto those pads. We'll take them right off of here and just take a nice look. This one has plenty of meat all the way around. It's not damaged in any way. If anything, it could use a little bit of parts cleaner, but that's about as much as I would go. Let's take a look at this one. That looks perfect as well. If they were worn at an angle or anything like that, that would be an issue that you'd need to diagnose. Let's get this bracket off of here. Let's remove the rotor. The next thing we need to do is get this cap off of here. I'm just going to use this pry bar. Next, we're going to remove our 36-millimeter axle nut. Get that washer off of there. Remove your 18-millimeter outer tie rod end nut. The next thing we need to do is hit right along here on the knuckle to break the outer tie rod end free. You can also notice that your outer tie rod end threads don't come all the way down to this point. So, if you wanted to, you can just give a couple of light bonks in an upward direction here. If that doesn't work, go ahead and make your way up here.

So, now if you follow this cable coming up along your upper control arm past your frame, and if you could see up behind here, see if I can bend that, you can see right where the connection is going to go in. Okay? That's got a little push clip that's going down into this bracket there. So, we're going to just go ahead and take that out. I have a little forky tool. Now, I'll bring it to where you can see. This was the push clip that was going down into this metal piece here. Separate the two. I always like to take a peek, make sure there's no funny colors in my connector. Make sure nothing's broken or torn. Set that aside. At this point, you can go ahead in between here. You can use something as simple as a pocket screwdriver or your finger even maybe, and you can start popping off these clips. This one right here is a little bit different. It's got two little ears that you're going to need to squish in. You can either do one at a time and just kind of try to work it at an angle or you can try to squeeze both with some pliers. There it is. The next thing we need to do is break our axle free from the wheel bearing. Go ahead and break that free with some penetrant and then use a punch right in the center there and a hammer. If you can see the axle moving, then you're doing all right. Now, the next thing we need to do is come from the backside of the knuckle, approximately where the axle is going to be. If I was to press in and out on the axle, you can see where the bolt's going to be.

For this one up here, obviously, I'm not going to be able to use my socket and ratchet. I'm going to have the upper ball joint in the way. Just use my wrench, carefully get it on there. There we are. And then we'll just wrench it right off of there. Go ahead and spray the area with some penetrant. The next thing we're going to do is remove the bearing from the knuckle itself. Before I get to hitting on it, I'm going to go ahead and put on this axle nut there. That's going to prevent the bearing from potentially falling off and hurting me. And then I'm just going to take my hammer and I'm going to give it a couple of loving bonks to try to pull it away from the knuckle. So, I have a nice clear gap here. I'm just going to keep on working at it. All right. That looks good. Remove the nut off of here, remove our bearing, and remove it from the backing plate. Now, the next thing we need to do is clean up the area where the new bearing is going to ride. If you were to look right along this area here, all in this circle is going to be up against the bearing. So, let's go ahead and clean that up as much as possible and then right along this edge right here as well. Pretty much the flat areas facing out towards us, the bearing is going to be pressed right up against it.

So, we've got the inside pretty cleaned up as much as we could. We cleaned up the outer portion here where the bearing is going to mount up against. Now, just check that splined area. Make sure there's no crud inside there. If you need to clean it down, go ahead and clean it down using some parts spray. Now, I'm going to push through all those bolts. Just take a peek at them and make sure they're still in good condition. If there's any thread locker, just try to clean it off of there. I'm going to go ahead and use a little bit of thread locker. I like to use thread locker on these for sure. Perfect. I'm gonna put a little bit right here too. Let's take a quick look at that backing plate. Make sure it's in good condition, it's not damaged in any way, it's not bent. Grab our new bearing, go ahead and put the wire right straight through there, and then line up the area where the wire is supposed to go through. Just like that. Now, we're going to take that and we're going to put the wire facing towards the top front of the vehicle. And just go ahead and twist it until it fits in on the axle and slide it right in. Okay.

All the bolts are bottomed out. Let's go ahead and torque them to 133 foot-pounds. That's torqued. Let's get our ABS cable back on here. Push the small side because if you were to look you'd see a larger side, put the smaller side right through here. Make sure it clicks in. Make sure it's secure. This is going to go across the top of your control arm. And then make its way over to here. This clip should sit right inside this groove. This groove right here is for that clip. Okay. We'll connect these in, give them a nice tug, make sure it's secure. Put your push clip through the hole. The next thing we're gonna do is get this outer tie rod end back on here. Torque this to 48 foot-pounds. Okay. Let's get our washer on there and our axle nut. The next thing we need to do is hold this so it can't spin. I'm just going to use a nice long pry bar, put it across the studs, and then we're going to torque our axle nut to 177 foot-pounds. Now, it's going to be time to get our cap back on. We want to make sure we cover this back up. Just take a peek at it and make sure it's in decent condition. If you don't see any holes in it, I would use some of this gasket maker. I'm going to come right along the area that's going to seal up against that bearing. This is going to keep the moisture out of there. That looks pretty great. Let's go ahead and get it on there. There it is. Neaten it up a little bit. Awesome.

The next thing that you would want to do is make sure you clean up the area on your rotor that's going to mate up against your wheel bearing. So, if you were to look at the backside, all right along here that's going to mate against the bearing needs to be clean. Let's use some copper never-seize right here on the hub. Let's get the rotor back up on here. Now, we're going to use one lug nut, screw it all the way on so it holds the rotor from moving around. The next thing we're going to need to do is push back the brake caliper. To do that, you can either open up this bleeder screw right here, and you take a risk, of course, breaking it either going in or out. Or you can just go ahead and turn the caliper around. I like to use a pad, and then you would just use something to squish this down and force those pistons back down and in. This is a tool that works great for the job. Just put it in here. As I crank, it's going to spread and it's going to push back those pistons. I'm going to do this nice and slow. You'll notice this is pushing in both pistons at the same time. If you tried to push in one piston at a time, more than likely the other piston is going to want to come out.

So, now we just need to take a peek along here and just double-check those boots. Make sure that they're not swollen, or pushed out, or ripped, or torn in any way, and there's definitely no leakage. These look great. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to continue on by using a little bit of caliper grease and I'm going to go right along the mating surfaces where the caliper is going to touch directly against the brake pad. The next things that we need to do is clean up our slider bolts here and, of course, get all the thread locker off of our mounting bolts. Now that I have these cleaned up, let's continue on by installing the caliper. Let's grab our bracket and our two bolts. I like to use a little bit of thread locker on them, but we'll call it your prerogative. Go ahead and slide that in, start in those bolts, we'll snug them up, and then we're going to torque them to 139 foot-pounds. You're gonna notice that one of your pads has two of these brake wear indicators and then the other one's going to have one. The pad that has two, goes on the inside. Put the outer pad on there. Let's grab the caliper, slide it right down over here. Be careful for these boots. You want to make sure that they're lined up with the hole so the slider can go through. Perfect.

At this point, we're going to add some lubricant to the sliders. When we're going to add it, we're going to put it along here all the way up to there, but you don't need to get it up onto the threaded area. Let's go ahead and put those in there. Bottom these out. Torque them to 80 foot-pounds. The next thing that I would want to do is pump up the brake and make sure everything's functioning properly. You also pump up the brake for safety so that way there, when you get inside the vehicle after you're done with this job, you will have a brake pedal. Now that we've pumped up the brake, I just want to check that brake fluid real quick. Now, let's go ahead and get this off of here and we'll get the wheel on. Now, let's go ahead and torque our lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds. Center cap, go ahead and pop it on there.

I'm gonna use a 22-millimeter socket, take off the lug nuts so we can remove the wheel. Now remove the wheel. I'm going to take these two caliper slide bolts out. I'm going to use an 18-millimeter socket. Get those free first. And slide those out. Now I'll take a screwdriver. I'm just going to pry the pistons of the caliper in a little bit. Just go in between the caliper and the rotor. Make it easier to take the caliper off. Now you can take a brake caliper hanger and support the brake caliper itself. Just hook it on the upper control arm or fold the caliper over and just set it so that it doesn't fall. Just make sure there's no tension on the brake hose. Now we can take the brake pads off. Just use a straight blade screwdriver. Just pry them off. Now we want to take the caliper bracket off. We're going to take these two bolts out. I'm gonna use an 18-millimeter socket. Loosen those up. Take those bolts out and slide the bracket off.

Take the rotor off. If your rotor is stuck on there, you can take a hammer and just hit in these areas. Just be careful of not hitting the studs. Slide it off. Now I'm going to take the ABS sensor off or the wheel speed sensor off. Disconnect the wire. This one has wire ties on it holding it on, but normally you just pop it out of the bracket right here. Right there. You can just slide under this retainer and slide it out. And then same with this. Where the connector is disconnect the connector, and just slide it out of the way.

Now we'll take the axle nut off, use a 36-millimeter socket. And take this washer off. You can use a magnet. And can just take a hammer, just give the axle a tap. Just make sure it's loose. You don't want to hit it too hard. You don't want to mushroom the end over because then you won't be able to get the nut on after, or you could always use a punch and tap it with a punch. Now there's three bolts on the backside of the knuckle. Take those three bolts out. Use a 15-millimeter socket. Just be careful of the CV boot. You don't want to rip the CV boot. At least get those loose. They may not come out because of the CV boot, but you could push the axle back and get them out. Now you can slide those bolts out or just leave them in there, either way.

Normally, you'll have a dust shield here. So keep that in mind. This vehicle doesn't have one but I'm going to take the hub off. Just use a hammer and just give it a tap on the backside. Try to get it separate from the knuckle. You just go back and forth. And slide it off. And if you had that shield, you'd have to slide the ABS sensor off the shield and reuse the shield when you put it back together. You can use a wire brush to clean this up a little bit and then just use a little bit of copper anti-seize just around here and just so it doesn't seize up. So if in the future you ever have to take off the hub again. All right. At this point, you would take that shield and run the ABS wire through the shield or wheel speed sensor wire, and then slide this in position. And put these bolts back in.

And now I'm going to torque all 3 of these bolts to 133 foot-pounds. Now take the wheel speed sensor wire and put it through that bracket. Slide under the brake hose and attach this to the upper control arm right there. And then this one is going to go right here. Push that through and connect the connector and then push the connector in on top. And take the washer, put the washer back on, put the nut on. Now I'm going to lower the vehicle down to the ground a little bit and use a pry bar to keep the hub from spinning. And I'm going to torque the nut to 177 foot-pounds. Just take a little anti-seize and just wipe it on the hub surface. Just a nice thin coat.

Now install the rotor. If you want to, you can put a lug nut on to hold the rotor on. Makes installing it a little bit easier. Keeps the rotor in place. And just slide the caliper bracket over the rotor. Take the bolts. You can put some thread lock adhesive on them. Now we're going to torque these bolts to 129 foot-pounds. Now I'm going to take the brake pads, put the brake pads on. Now, the warning indicator for the inboard pad, the one that goes on the inside, is going to be at the bottom. There's only one. There's nothing on the top. The one that goes in the outside has both squealers or warning indicators. Slide those in position.

Now I need to compress the pistons back into the caliper. You can use a piston compressing tool. They make different types of tools. This is a ratchet type. As I tighten this up, it's going to push the piston back into the caliper, which is going to push the brake fluid through the hoses, through the lines, and back up into the master cylinder. Just go nice and slow. You don't want to rush this. The slower, the better. Those pistons are compressed. Now slide the caliper over the brake pads. Now you can take the two brake caliper bolts. Clean them off with some brake parts cleaner. Wipe them off. These aren't too bad. And just take some brake caliper grease, put it on the guide pins. Now install the caliper bolts or guide pins. And torque those to 80 foot-pounds.

Now you can take this lug nut off and put the wheel back up. Now put the tire back on. And the lug nuts. Now I'm going to torque the lug nuts to 140 foot-pounds in a star pattern or a cross pattern so that it tightens the wheel down evenly.

And just go around again. Double-check. Now, after you're done, you want to make sure you pump up the brake pedal nice and slow. There's going to be an air gap between the caliper piston and the brake pads. So just do that until that feels pretty good. And then double-check your brake fluid level and adjust accordingly.