How to Replace Front Wheel Bearing Hub Assembly 1997-99 Ford F-150

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We're going to start this project. We're going to go ahead and loosen the wheel, the lug nuts here. We're going to use a breaker bar with a 19 millimeter socket. Next, we're going to go ahead and raise and support your vehicle. You can use a jack and jack stands. In this case here, we're using a lift to make it a little bit easier. We'll just go ahead and remove the lug nuts here just by using that socket because we've already loosened those. With the lug nuts removed, we can now go ahead and remove the wheel and tire.

So we're going to go ahead in and we're going to straighten out the cotter pin the best we can. I'm going to try and get that out. Line that up a little bit. Go down below. I'm going to try and pull this out. So now that we have the cotter pin out, I'm going to go ahead and thread the bolts back on here, and you're probably wondering why. We're going to have to use the studs here. You can do this in your driveway. I just want to get these on. I'm not sure which ones I'm going to use, so I'm just going to throw four of these on. You're going to see why in just a second. I'm going to go ahead and use this here as a leverage point, and we don't want to mottle up the threads. That way there we can get our wheel back on later.

Now we have a 35 millimeter socket. That might vary, depending on your application. And this is what we're going to do. There we go. And now that that's fairly loose, we can use a ratchet wrench. Okay. That does come off. Now, as you can see, all the studs are still perfectly fine, no damage. All right, so we're going to go ahead and remove the brake caliper and the bracket assembly as one complete unit. So to go ahead and start that, we can use a basic c-clamp, and what you want to do is use the c part, but on the inside of the brake pad area, okay, and then bring this backside and put it on the back side of the caliper. Be sure not to catch the hard brake line right there. Now, you don't have to crank it in too far. You just want it to apply some pressure and as you start to tighten it, you can actually see the space between the caliper itself and the pad push in. You just want to do it a little bit.

Back up and you want to do it to the lower half. This lets you release the tension on the caliper, pushes a little bit of brake fluid back up into the system. You can see that this is moving pretty freely right now because a lot less tension on there. So on the back side you have a large bolt right here and one right on the bottom. There's only two of them holding this on and we're actually going to use an 18 millimeter to go ahead and remove those. Once you get those loose, you can go ahead and use a ratchet. Okay, so we're getting these bolts pulled out.

All right, so you want to hold onto this caliper and the bracket. It is a heavy unit. Now you want to be prepared, have either a bungee cord or a strap. You want to pull this off, just slip right off, with your brake pads, caliper and the bracket. You want to anchor this somehow back up to the suspension of the chassis so it doesn't fall down. All right, once you pull off the caliper and the bracket, your rotor can slip right off.

So we want to remove this wheel hub assembly. Now, on the back side there's going to be three 15 millimeter bolts. There's going to be one right here, one right here, and there's one right over here. All right? So we want to go ahead and loosen those. Now you want to go ahead and turn your key to the on position in the cab of the vehicle and then you might want to disconnect the battery so you don't kill the battery while you're working on this, but this gives you the opportunity to go ahead and manipulate your steering by hand because you're going to want to be able to move back and forth from each one of these bolts.

Now, normally you can use a wrench to simply get in here and loosen these components. You might want to use a pipe for some leverage on this to go ahead and remove this. You might also experience an issue where these are so tight where you can use some heat to go ahead and loosen those up a little bit. In this case here, I'm going to go ahead and apply a little bit of heat. Now, the bolt comes through. You might want to apply some heat on this side of the flange also. So we want to go ahead and use a 15 millimeter deep socket. This gives you some clearance of this hub here, of this CV axle. Make sure that's on there pretty good and go ahead and loosen that. You can actually see the bolt actually backing out from the hub flange itself. Watch right here. There you go. Now, if for some reason you run into an issue where you happen to strip or round off the head of these bolts, it is something that you want to get from the dealer. They're not just regular hardware bolts to use on these applications.

All right, once you get those two loose, just grab the hub, rotate this knuckle, and that should give you access to this front one right here. Make sure it's on there straight and good. You don't want to replace those bolts if you don't have to. There we go. With a regular ratchet just speed things up, just go ahead and pull those out. They're going to get to a point where you can just spin them out with a socket or pull it off. Just get your hands in there. Just make sure if you're using heat that the metal cools off before you start touching that. Now go ahead and pull that one out.

Okay, with the three bolts removed, you can go ahead and straighten that out a little bit, and with a hammer you can go ahead and tap the back of the flange, rotate around. So in case your axle shaft, obviously in this case here we replace the axle shaft, but in case the splines are stuck in here and you can use some of your rust penetrant. You can go ahead and put a block of wood on the end of the CV axle and just kind of tap that maybe. This way you can actually see it moving in. You can do that just to break the seal on that so that it comes out. Break any rust or anything that might be sticking there. Go ahead and tap this. You can see it working its way out. As you see on the back side here, it's separating from the knuckle itself. All right, now you can see that the hub is coming out. Just with your thumbs push the CV axle. There we go.

So here we have the original factory part, over here we have the 1A Auto replacement. On the backside here you can see the three-bolt flange, same one that's here, has the bearing pressed in. Direct replacement, no modifications needed.

Okay, so here's your hub. We're going to go ahead and put it into the knuckle assembly itself, but one thing we want to make note of, on the back side here is actually another seal. This is what we call the knuckle or the axle seal. Now, all it does is it protects the back of the bearing itself. The hub does not come with this seal. It is replaceable. You can get that at your local auto parts store. So this seal here is just fine. There's no need for us to go ahead and replace it but if you did need that, get that at your local auto parts store.

We're going to go ahead and apply a little bit of grease to the splines on the axle shaft here. Just makes it a little bit easier to slide onto the hub. Get that lined up. Manipulate that CV axle in the back a little bit to move around. And this basically just slides right into place. Okay, so now we're at the stage where we can go ahead and put the bolts back in. Now, I did use a little bit of anti-seize compound on the back side here. So in case for some reason you ever have to remove this again, the bolt itself will come out easy. Go ahead and get that just to kind of thread it a couple threads by hand. We'll go ahead and get that lower one put in. Sometimes you just gotta wiggle the hub a little bit to get that going. Then we're just going to rotate this by hand and get the front bolt in. Okay, so the torque specs are between 110 and 148 on these hub two knuckle bolts. We're going to go right in the middle. Reinstall your axle nut. We're using a 35 millimeter socket for this and the range is 188 to 254 for the torque spec range on this here. We're going to go right in the middle.

All right, so I reinstall the three of the wheel nuts on here just so I could use the pry bar once again. We don't want to damage the threads on that so we just use that there as a leverage point. I'm actually going to set that up just like this. No I'll go ahead and remove the lug nuts here. Now we're going to go ahead and install the cap right here, making sure that the hole for the cotter pin lines up with the tabs on the crown. It should slip right in. And with your pliers, just roll those on over there.

So an alternative way to torqueing down your hub nut is to simply pop this center cap from behind. This will give you access to use your torque wrench and socket. So you want to pop that center cap, install the wheel, torque it down, and then lower the vehicle down, put it on the ground, and go ahead and finish torqueing to the specification. Go ahead and reinstall the center cap and you're all set.

So now we're going to go ahead and reassemble the brakes. So we're going to take the original rotor and we're going to install this component here. Then next we want to go ahead and take that caliper, slide that right back on over here. Just going to thread in the two bolts into the back side here. So we're using an 18 millimeter socket with ratchet to go ahead and snug this up. All right so we're going to take the 18 millimeter socket and put it on the torque wrench, and then we're going to tighten this to 136 foot-pounds.

All right, we're going to go ahead and reinstall the tire. We're going to go ahead and reinstall the lug nuts here. You want to get a few threads caught on all of these here. These lug nuts are a 19 millimeter. So we're just going to snug these bottom and out. Bottom of the wheel out to the rotor. We're going to lower the vehicle down onto its own weight and then to a final torque. With the vehicle on the ground, we're going to do its final torque of the wheel which is between 83 and 112 foot-pounds. We're going to do it in a star pattern. Before test driving the vehicle, you want to start the engine and pump the brakes a few times. This will reseat the brake pads and compress the calipers.

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