How to Replace Rear Hub Assembly and Brakes 2010-16 Toyota Prius

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

Before you move the brake caliper and brake pads, make sure you disconnect the negative battery terminal. There is an electric brake controller that, if the door is opened, the driver's door, or even if you accidentally touch the brake pedal, it will activate the braking system and, potentially, you could have the piston come out of the caliper if you've got this disconnected. So you just want to make sure that the negative terminal of the 12 volt battery is disconnected and put aside before you touch the brake system. You need to pop the hubcap off. You need a large flat bladed screwdriver or a small pry bar. Just kind of work it under the edge of the hubcap, just pop right off.

Use the 20 millimeter deep socket and a large breaker bar to loosen the lug nuts with the vehicle on the ground so that the wheel doesn't spin on you. This'll make it a lot easier to take them off once it's up on jack stands. Going to raise and support the vehicle. You can do this with a jack and jack stands. We're going to use our two post lift. Finish removing the lug nuts using the socket. Put the wheel and tire aside.

Just going to hold onto the wheel because it wants to fall off once I get this lug nut loose. Take the wheel and tire off and put it aside. Before you can remove the caliper, you need to unhook the parking brake cable. I'll just spray a little bit of rust penetrant on here. It'll just help it slide apart. Take some needle nose pliers, grab onto the cable, and at the same time going to try to pull it up and out.

So we're kind of just popping it out of this little seat where it's sitting. There it is. Pull the cable down and out. The parking brake cable will just sit like that. Need to remove the parking brake cable from the bracket that's mounted to the rear brake caliper. It has a one way clip on it. I'm going to spray some rust penetrant on here. Take the box end part of a 14 millimeter wrench. We'll slide it over the cable. Go down, it's going to push the clip together. Might have to go in a little bit if we can. Then it's going to pull the cable out. All right.

Now I can slide the cable out of the bracket. We'll let it hang there. Now we can remove the lower and upper caliper slide pin bolts. They are 14 millimeter. Use the closed end of the wrench to loosen them up. Same for the top one. Spin them out by hand. Then slide the caliper off. You can't pre-compress the caliper because it does have the parking brake assembly in it and it will have to be spun back into the caliper to retract it afterwards. So we'll put this aside and it will actually just sit right here on the suspension. You can pop the brake pads out and push them apart. Loosen the lower and upper bracket mounting bolts.

So these are 14 millimeter. Break these free. At the end, they're really tight. Use a 14 millimeter socket and a long ratchet to get some leverage on these. Got that one loosened. We'll loosen the other one. Once got them loose enough, loosen them by hand. We'll hold onto the bracket so it doesn't fall. Put that aside.

This rotor is already pretty loose. If it wasn't, you could spray some rust penetrant along here and then insert some eight millimeter bolts. You can push this off but it's going to come free and come right off of there. Put a bungee cord around the caliper just to hold it in place. ABS wheel speeds connector is underneath this gray plastic, which is sort of a protective cover. You should be able to put a screwdriver in here and pop it off with a small flat bladed screwdriver. If you can't push the connector in, because it is under this gray plastic, you can gently pry it apart just like that. Pry this open and pull the cover off. But be careful because the wires are through it, but they'll unclip. Then you'll have better access to the connector that's underneath. You can actually see it, and the connector is on the bottom here.

It'll have to be pushed up, and it's kind of filled with dirt. It doesn't really want to move. But it'll have to be pushed up and then pulled off. So what you can use is some water displacement oil. It's not going to hurt anything, but it will help make the connector come apart a little easier, because they do get filled up with dirt. Then I'm going to teach under here and use the screwdriver to pry, and I'm going to push up on the lock because it takes a lot of force.

I probably can't do it with my fingers. Try to pull on the connector, not the wires. Then I got it apart. Don't worry about the oil. It's not going to hurt anything. There are four bolts holding in the wheel bearing. There's two on the bottom and two on the top. You'll have to spin the hub so you can have access to them. Before I try to remove them though, I can see some of the threads from the back, so I'm going to spray some rust penetrant. There's two here, and this one's a little further in, and this one's over here. Use a 14 millimeter socket, a short extension, and a long ratchet. We'll go through the opening in the hub. Put this on here. That one's free. I'll get lined up on this one.

Spray some rust penetrant in here. Finish removing the bolts. Got one of the bolts out. It is rusted in place. It should be bolt in, but the wheel bearing is steel going into the steel axle beam, so it's kind of ceased in place. So I'm going to try to tap it, see if it'll come free. I'm going to try to spray some rust penetrant into the holes here. Try to get behind. Going to try to get under here with a pry bar and a hammer and just try to separate these. I'm just trying to work on both sides to get it to come out evenly.

Here's our original hub and bearing assembly we pulled from our vehicle. Has an integrated speed sensor for the ABS. This is the brand new one from 1A Auto. Same exact style and same set up. There we go. It's now mounted the same way. Same style mounting holes, same style connector, and integrated ABS wheel speed sensor. This'll work great and feel great in your vehicle. Use a wire brush and clean up this bore as best I can, the rust that's in there so the new one slides into place. Knock some of the rust off the surface here. Wipe it down.

Doesn't have to be perfect, but any of the loose stuff, getting that off of there will definitely help. I'm going to take some white grease and just put it along the inside of this bore. This will help the wheel bearing slide into place. It's not going to do anything else. It won't interfere with anything, so just use some white grease. What it was stuck on was this was rusted to the metal of this. These are both steel, so this rusted together, and then this flange sits on the outside.

Of course, don't forget your dust shield. This one's a little banged up. It's rusty. One of the holes is broken obviously where I knocked the hub off, but that's okay, because the wheel bearing and hub assembly will hold it in place. The wider bolts or the wider bolt holes will go to the top. The narrow ones towards the bottom. So we'll get it in place. Adjust this to see the holes line up. Install one of the bolts. Get it threaded in by hand. Install the other bolts. Have to line them up.

Dust shield is just thin sheet metal. Once I got the wheel bearing in place and torqued, I can readjust the dust shield so it doesn't touch the rotor or anything and make noise. Just going to snug these up. It’s going to go across and pull these down evenly. This hub and wheel bearing assembly doesn't fit super tightly into the axle beam, which is fine, but if it fit really tightly on yours, you'd want to just draw it in nice and evenly. Just doing two bolts for right now is fine. Get them sort of tight. Come back and torque them. I torque the wheel bearing bolts to 66 foot-pounds. Once it clicks you're all set. I'll do them in a cross pattern just so they go evenly.

Wheel bearing is installed, so plug the connector back in. It's keyed. It will only go on one way, but the lock does go towards the bottom. Click when it locks in place. I'm going to reinstall this gray cover. So the wire did clip into here, the rubber part. It's clipped in like that. Then we'll push the gray over the connector. So that sat like that. Then push this over. Get that wire back in there. Get that clipped together just like that.

Here's the original brake rotor and pads. We pulled it from our vehicle. Here's the brand new ones from 1AAuto.com. Same exact style and solid rear disc. Same style pads. These particular ones come with new hardware. This'll work great and fit great in your vehicle.

Inside your brake caliper bracket sits your pad hardware. These are stainless. If you need to, you can reuse them. Use some brake parts cleaner and a wire brush, and you can clean them up. These have a little tab, so I'm going one direction. Do the same for both sides. Then you can clean them up with a rag and they'll work just as good as new for you. If you have replacement ones, you can take a flat bladed screwdriver. Just pop them out. I'm going to pop these out because I do have replacement ones. You'll want to clean where they sit, so, again, brake parts cleaner. Wire brush. Knock off some of the loose rust. Do the same for both sides.

Install the new hardware. Push them into place. This ones got a little bent, just bend it back. Next you can check to make sure your sliders are moving nice and freely. This one's moving pretty freely. This one's really stiff. So if that hardware comes out, that's okay. I'm going to put that aside for now. Use a 17 millimeter wrench to try to turn it. Get it to move freely. Trying to pull it out. We need to carefully pry back the boot. Once it's out of the boot, try to work it out of the caliper bracket.

We'll put one of the caliper slide bolts in here. Give me a little extra place to grab onto. Let's get this hardware out. This slide pin you can see is really dry. It's corroded. This should be really smooth, nice looking metal with grease on it. This needs to be serviced because it didn't want to move. This one moves really nicely.

Usually the ones with the rubber end move a little bit slower, but they will move. This one didn't want to move at all. It was very difficult to get out. Going to clean it with some brake parts cleaner. Try to brush off some of the buildup. Worst case is you'll have to replace this caliper or at least the slide pin bolts. Use a scouring pad with brake parts cleaner. That looks a lot better.

Just going to clean inside where that slide pin went with some brake parts cleaner. Take some brake caliper grease. Grease up this slide pin. Push it back in. Now you can see it moves nice and freely, in and out. I'm sure this one moves, but I am also going to lube this one up. So you can see this one came out. This also had a rubber stopper on it. Sometimes only one of them will have that. This one had both. But you can see how this has grease on it, that's why it was moving nice and freely. Just clean off the old grease.

I'm not going to worry about cleaning inside there because it was fully greased and it was moving freely, so I'll just reapply some more to this one. Fresh stuff. Put that back in. Moves nice and freely now. Much better. Push these clips into place. This is ready to be reinstalled on the car.

Reinstall the rotor backwards and spray it with brake parts cleaner to remove the oil that it's shipped in so that it doesn't flash rust. Going to make sure this surface is nice and clean. You don't want any oil or dirt contaminating your new brake pads. I'll just touch the edges and flip it over. It doesn't matter where this is installed. I'll put one of the lug nuts on here so the rotor doesn't flop around while I'm trying to reinstall brake caliper bracket. Spray down this surface to get rid of the oil coating with the brake parts cleaner. At this point you can check. So that's not sitting. There we go. Now it's sitting nice and flat.

It's not touching the dust shield, so it's not going to make any scraping noises. If it was touching, it might make a noise, and you can just bend that dust shield away. Reinstall our brake caliper bracket. Get it lined up in place with the bolts in my hand. Get them threaded in by hand first, we might have to move the bracket around. Same for this one. We'll torque the caliper mounting bracket bolts up to 42 foot-pounds. Once it clicks, you're all set. And we'll do both.

Just give the brake pads a quick spray of brake cleaner. You don't need to soak them. Just want to make sure there's no grease or oil on there. Take a little bit of caliper grease and put it on the ears where they'll slide in the caliper hardware. And push them in place so the wider part of the pad goes towards the outside. Push them in place. Same for the outer pad.

So these little return springs were missing when we originally took them off. They do go in here. Those little pins right here, they'll just help keep the pads from rattling. Just set it like that. We'll unhook the caliper. We sort of had it hooked up here. We didn't want it to fall, but hopefully it wasn't. Now to compress this caliper in, there is a special tool that goes in here to turn it. I'm just going to use some needle nose pliers. Take a little longer but it should work. Just turning it in clockwise.

The reason why you have to turn this one in, you can't just push it in, is because part of it is integrated with the parking brake or emergency brake, and when you pull the emergency brake it actually ratchets this piston out and holds the brake caliper closed to be used as the emergency brake. I'll just spin this in. Moving pretty freely. That looks like it's right touching the edge of the seal, so I think that's as far in as it's going to go.

We're just going to make sure that this faces like that. With this, oops, want to make sure I don't loop the hose around. What's going to happen—there's a pin here—the bottom of the pad, the pin's going to sit in that space here. That's why you have to have this basically up and down vertically. We'll slide it in place. Might have to push the caliper slide pins a little bit. That'll sit in place. I'll get the bolts started. Get the other bolt started. Set the torque of the upper and lower caliper slide pin bolts to 25 foot-pounds. Once it clicks, you're all set.

If it does spin, you can kind of hold that with a 17 millimeter. We got lucky, these aren't spinning. Torque the top and the bottom. Okay. Caliper's reinstalled. Now you need to reinstall the parking brake cable, so it's going to go up through the bracket through the clip. Come on. There it is. We have to get it up into this bracket here. All right. I'm going to have to pull it with some needle nose pliers. I'm going to pull it up and then try to pry it over with my little pry bar. Not quite. Almost there, so I'll pry it over. It can be kind of a bear, but once it pops into place it'll lock in and you're all set.

Take our lug nut off that we had on here to hold the brake rotor in place. Now we can reinstall the wheel and tire. Get it up in place. Try to get them centered as best as you can. These lug nuts do have a shoulder on them. The wheel is both hub centric and then lug centric, so the lug holes are a little bit wider. As you turn these in, they're going to center themselves. So get them started by hand. Get this one in as far as I can go. Then reinstall the other four. Get these all threaded in by hand. We'll take the socket and just snug them up. We'll put the vehicle on the ground and torque the lug nuts. Going to torque the lug nuts to 76 foot pounds in a cross pattern. Once it clicks they're all set. Line up the hole through your valve stem. Push your hubcap into place.

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