How to Replace Rear Hub Assembly 2002-06 Nissan Altima

Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

Before you raise and support the vehicle, take a breaker bar and a 21mm socket and break the lug nuts free while the vehicle is on the ground. Raise and support your vehicle. Once the lug nuts are loose, I can use the socket and finish removing them. Remove the wheel and place it aside.

Start by grabbing the caliper before you remove it and pushing it, or pulling it outward to try to compress it so that when we go to unbolt it, it will slide away from the brake pads. I want to take a 14 millimeter wrench and see if I can break these free. They're pretty tight. I'm going to use a dead blow mallet and break that one free. Do the same with the bottom one. It goes loose so I can switch to a ratcheting wrench. We use a ratcheting wrench to finish removing these.

Now these are actually the slide bolts and we pull them out. So what I'm going to do – with this lower slide bolt, the control arm is in the way. I can't pull it out. We're going to roll the brake caliper down, I'm just going to thread the lower bolt back in a little bit.

That way it stays put, and I can remove the brake pads. Use a flat bladed screwdriver or a small pry bar. These ones are pretty stuck. Use a small screwdriver. That's okay if they fall on the floor. They’re old brake pads anyways. I'm not too worried about the rear one if I can't get it out because I've kind of released the pressure from it by removing the front one. I'm going to unbolt the bracket and I'm just going to pull the whole thing off together.

I'm going to remove the two 19 millimeter caliper bracket bolts. The lower one is here. The upper one is here. I'm going to start with the upper one, with a 19 millimeter wrench on here. Take my dead blow mallet, break it free. With the top one loosened I will loosen the lower one. Same thing, I'll use a dead blow mallet to break it free. Since these are loose, I'm going to switch to a ratchet and 19 millimeter socket to speed removal. I get that one pretty loose but not all the way out, because I want to work on the bottom one. It's going to need an extension. Try an extension in here, ratchet out here, and this 19 millimeter socket and extension. Now remove the lower bolt and finish removing the top one, the one with the bracket because it will become loose. It needs a little persuasion. It was frozen in there. Now I can unscrew, take off our slide pin bolts, lay the caliper up here for now. Take a bungee cord, just hold it up and out of the way.

The e-brake should be released but this is pretty rusty. There might be a rust ridge in here. I’m going to try to get this rotor off. Normally there's a rubber cap here. You pop that out and you can reach the adjuster and turn the adjuster in to pull the e-brake shoes, which are inside here together to help release this rotor. You may have to do that. I'm going to try spraying some rust penetrant around the edge of the hub and around the studs. I'm going to give it a couple whacks with our dead blow hammer, see if the rotor will just come right off. Otherwise, I'll have to work on releasing the e-brake. We might get lucky. It slid right off without having to release the adjustment. If you had to release the adjustment, you'd use this access hole and you'd go through here and turn this so the shoes would pull themselves in here.

There are four bolts that hold in the back of the wheel bearing. It’s a bolt-in style. This one here, one here, one here, and one over here. They go all the way through and they bolt into the wheel bearing assembly, which is now exposed here. I can spray rust penetrant on the back side of the bolts. Try not to get any on your brake shoes. It's not a big deal, we'll clean it with some brake parts cleaner afterwards.

This is your parking brake assembly in here. The hub can come out without disturbing this stuff. If you're worried about disturbing it, you should take a picture of it with your phone so you remember how it goes back together.

Now I can take a 17mm socket extension and a breaker bar. I'm going to go behind and start loosening the bolts. Start with this one over here. Give it a good push. With that one loose, reach up to that next one. With those loose, I'll switch to a ratchet. All right, all the bolts are removed. I'll try to pull this out. It's kind of a lip and it sits in a bore that's inside the knuckle. So, I'm going to hold it, take a dead blow, and knock it. I can just see a little gap starting to open up when I spray some rust penetrant in there. It doesn't go deep into the knuckle, just need to break that seal.

See if I can spray some under here. I can't really reach under there. It’s okay. It should run down. Keep hitting it. I've taken two of the original bolts, and I've threaded them in sort of halfway. Then what I'm going to do, they're on opposite side, I've got a punch and a hammer, and I'm going to try to drive out the wheel bearing assembly evenly. So, I've used those bolts with the punch to push it loose, so now it's just hanging on the bolts. I'm going to go in and remove those again.

I'm going to hold the hub because it's very loose. As soon as I take this bolt out it's, going to want to fall. It's just going to slide out between all the parking brake stuff. And you can see, this is the little bore that it was in. It gets rusted and it was stuck, and that's why we had to hit it out with a punch using the bolts.

Here is our old hub and wheel bearing assembly from our vehicle. Here is our new one from 1AAuto.com. You can see, it's the same lug pattern, same style hub where your wheel would sit. They're both bolt-in. It's got the same style bore and lip that will fit into the knuckle, and it's bolt-in. So if your wheel bearing's making noise, this brand new one from 1AAuto.com will make your car quiet again.

We'll take some rust penetrant and a wire brush, and just try to clean up this opening from any loose big pieces of rust as best I can. It will help the new wheel bearing seat in position. That I can take some brake parts cleaner and just clean up in there. Clean up our brake pads. Sorry, clean up our brake shoes for our parking brake, e-brake. Now is a good time to inspect them.

These look to be in great condition. I'm going to leave them alone. I'm going to just mention, this is a plastic dust cover. It just slides out, slides back in. Our car does not have ABS, so there's no ABS sensor we had to worry about. That just sits in there. I've cleaned this bore up. We'll take our new wheel bearing assembly and slide it between the brake shoes, get it seated. It's a little tight, which is good. I'm going to use a dead blow to tap it into place. We'll capture our bolts. Once you get the holes lined up, the bolts will thread right in my hand. Using a socket and ratchet to tighten them down. Torque on these is 58-68. I've set my torque wrench to 60 foot-pounds.

Install the new rotor. I'm going to start out by installing it backwards. This way I can clean the oil off it that keeps it from corroding in shipping. I'm going to spray the inside because that's where the parking brake shoes are going to run. Take a rag, wipe down any excess, down the inside. Flip it over and install it over the studs.

Since the new rotor is brand new it's thicker and it won't fit over our parking brake adjuster or parking brake shoes, so we need to spin the auto adjuster in to give us more clearance. I'm just going to turn it up with this flat bladed screwdriver. It's going to pull the shoes in. This is automatic adjustment so as soon as you pull the handbrake a couple times or the parking brake handle, it will adjust out and it latches. These little notches lock against the spring, so once it goes this way it can't spin back. It has to be flipped back manually by doing this. Since I touched them, I'm just going to clean them off with brake parts cleaner. Let's try our rotor this time. There it is. So it should slide over with no resistance. I'll take a lug nut to hold the rotor in place.

We're going to remove the brake pad clips. They're stainless. We can clean them up and reuse them. So use a flat bladed screwdriver, pop them out. Pop out both sides. I'm just going to clean where they sit. Take some brake parts cleaner and wire brush and knock off the loose stuff. Repeat for the other side. Then I clean the clips with brake parts cleaner. Then I brush. Reinstall them on the caliper bracket. They click back into place. This is ready to go back on the car.

Unhook our brake caliper. I'm just going to lay it there for a second. You need to compress the piston inside here. Use our C-clamp and an old brake pad, and just gently compress the caliper piston in. That's good. Place these aside.

Before we can install the bracket fully, the lower slide pin that has the rubber bushing on it has to go through the caliper. You can actually start threading in a little bit. It's going to sit here. Because the suspension arm is in the way, I can't slide it in, so it needs to sit like this. Now I can line up the bracket and capture the top bolt. Now I can capture the lower bolt. Start tightening the bolt.

Before you go too far, I skipped it, but we're going to do it now, clean this brake rotor surface down from the protective oil that it's shipped with. You can wipe off any excess with a rag.

Now we can install our pads. Going to make sure that we didn't touch the surface of the pad. If you did, you can just clean with some brake parts cleaner. Put a little bit of caliper grease on the ears. Again, the same thing, make sure these pads are nice and clean. Use a little bit caliper grease.

I’m going to place the outside pad in here. We can slide our caliper back over. I'm going to push the little boot in. Slide our caliper pins in here. Thread them in.

When I had this rotor off and we were cleaning up I actually found the rubber plug that belongs in here, and I replaced that. I'm going to torque the brake caliper carrier bolts, these two big ones back here, torque as 116 to 144. I got my torque wrench set to 120 foot-pounds. For this top one, I don't need the extension. For the caliper slide pins, torque is 20 to 35, got my torque wrench set to 30.

For the final step after installing the wheel and torquing the lug nuts when the car is on the ground, gently step on the brake pedal. What that's going to do is bring the caliper piston out to meet the pads. See right now the brake caliper is loose. It's moving on its slide pins. When you step on the brakes, it pulls it in, pulls the brakes to the rotor. That's what helps you stop. We need to bring that piston out so it takes up the gap that's here and you'll be able to stop.

Install the wheel. Thread them on by hand first. Torque on these is 72 to 85. I've got the torx wrench set to 80 foot-pounds. I'm going in cross pattern. The wheel's installed and torqued.

Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.

How to Replace Rear Hub Assembly 2002-06 Nissan Altima

step 1 :Removing the Wheel

step 2 :Removing the Brake Pads

step 3 :Removing the Brake Rotor

step 4 :Removing the Hub

step 5 :Installing the Hub

step 6 :Installing the Brake Rotor

step 7 :Installing the Brake Pads

step 8 :Installing the Wheel

Tools needed

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2002-06 Nissan Altima Rear Wheel Bearing & Hub Assembly TRQ BHA54237

How to Replace Rear Wheel Bearings and Axle Seals 2000-06 GMC Yukon

Same Day Shipping

Guaranteed To Fit

USA Customer Support

Instructional Video Library

How to Replace Rear Hub Assembly 2002-06 Nissan Altima

step 1 :Removing the Wheel 0:17

step 2 :Removing the Brake Pads 0:46

step 3 :Removing the Brake Rotor 4:33

step 4 :Removing the Hub 5:42

step 5 :Installing the Hub 9:32

step 6 :Installing the Brake Rotor 6:13

step 7 :Installing the Brake Pads 11:28

step 8 :Installing the Wheel 19:10

Tools needed

Shop Products

2002-06 Nissan Altima Rear Wheel Bearing & Hub Assembly TRQ BHA54237

How to Replace Rear Wheel Bearings and Axle Seals 2000-06 GMC Yukon

Same Day Shipping

Guaranteed To Fit

USA Customer Support

Instructional Video Library

step 1 :Removing the Wheel

step 2 :Removing the Brake Pads

step 3 :Removing the Brake Rotor

step 4 :Removing the Hub

step 5 :Installing the Hub

step 6 :Installing the Brake Rotor

step 7 :Installing the Brake Pads

step 8 :Installing the Wheel