How to Replace Rear Knuckle 2005-16 Toyota RAV4

What's up guys? I'm Andy from 1A Auto. In this video, I'm going to show you how to replace the rear knuckle on this 2010 Toyota Rav4. If you need parts for your vehicle, click the link in the description and head over to 1aauto.com.

I'm going to pull this wheel off. I'm going to use a 21 millimeter socket and an air gun. If you don't have an air gun, you can use a breaker bar and just break the lug nuts free while the vehicle's still on the ground.

Take the wheel off. I want to take the wheel speed sensor out, so I'm going to use a 10 millimeter socket and a ratchet. Take this bolt out right here. That bolt out, try to grab the sensor, wiggle it. Sometimes it'll pull right out. If you struggle a little bit, just take a pair of pliers and just wiggle it out. Then I want to pull the wiring harness out of the way, so I'm going to take the nuts off right here. There's a bracket that holds the wiring on and then there's two other brackets on this upper control arm. So take those off with the same 10 millimeters socket and ratchet. Loosen that up. Pull that out. I'm going to pull these two off. I'm just removing this so that I don't put too much tension on the on the wiring harness because you don't want to break the wiring harness.

And actually, if you're pulling this arm out, you have to take these off anyway. Slide that out. Just remember the way that the wiring harness was rooted, then we can set this over here. Set it aside. I'm just going to use a little rust penetrant right here on this nut, on the bolt a little bit. I'm going to use a 17 millimeter wrench. Just put it on the nut on that side, and then a 17 millimeter socket and air gun on this side. If you don't have an air gun, just use a breaker bar and we're going to loosen this up.

I got the nut off, which is good. I'm going to try to take this bolt out. I'm going to have to push on this area. You might need a pry bar to get this out. We're going to use a long punch right here. Just tap that bolt through. Try not to be too close to this area when you're taking this out just in case it kicks back on you. Use a 17 millimeter socket and ratchet. Should be able to unscrew it the rest of the way while I'm pulling on it, giving it a little bit of force. It's just a little bit rusty that's why it doesn't slide out too smooth.

Now I should be able to take a pry bar. Just pry this out. We can take a hammer and just give it a little tap. Slide that out like that. Now I'm going to take this caliper off. Now you could have taken this caliper off before you disconnected this, or either way. But at this point, we'll take this off. I'm going to use a 17 millimeter socket and a ratchet. Then I'm just taking off the bolts at the bracket. I'm not going to separate the caliper from the bracket. Loosen those up, and then same with the bottom one. Loose those up, then I'll use my electric ratchet.

Take those bolts out. Grab the caliper. I like to go back and forth with it and then that compresses the piston a little bit. Take a caliper hanger. Try to slide it however you can. We're going to hang this from the actual spring. Twist this around this way, just like that. It's just going to hang there. Just make sure there's no tension on the actual brake caliper hose. We can grab the rotor. Slide it off. If your rotor's rusted on there, you can take a hammer and just hit in these locations. Just be careful of the studs.

I want to remove this nut. What I'm going to do is use a punch. What it is is they hammer this down this section so that the nut doesn't loosen up on you. So just use a punch. Just try to reform it so that you can loosen it. I'm going to use a little rust penetrant on there and I'll use a 30 millimeter socket. It is a 12 point socket. We actually sell this at 1aauto.com. And I'll use an air gun. If you don't have an air gun, you can use a breaker bar. You just want to make sure you support the wheel bearing from spinning. So you're going to have to use a pry bar in there. Generally, if you drop it down to the ground, you can have the ground hold the pry bar while you loosen it up.

Now that axle is loose, which is good. And if it wasn't, I would just give it a little tap with a hammer on there. Make sure you don't mess up the threads on the end. I'm going to take these wheel bearing bolts out. I'm going to use a 14 millimeter socket and a ratchet. Take these out. There's four of those.

This bottom one, I just need a extension to access it. All right, if you need to, you can use a breaker bar. That's the last bolt. I'm going to use a slide hammer. So I'm just going to set this bracket up right here. You can try to tap this with a hammer if you don't have a slide hammer, just the shoes are going to be in your way. If you want to go the extra mile and take the shoes off and do that, but it's a lot more work that you don't need to do.

Just checking to see if it's sliding out. There we go. That was easy. All right, I want to take this nut off right here. I'm going to use a 22 millimeter socket and a breaker bar. Loosen this up.

To prevent this backing shields from moving, I'm just going to take a couple of those bolts that go through for the hub assembly. Put those in this way, four here and right there. That'll prevent this from spinning. Now I can take that nut off a little easier. Now I can take this bolt out a little easier. Slide that nut off. Pull that bolt out. Then you can just grab this whole backing shield. Slide it out.

You can slide it out of the way. You can leave all the parking brake assembly all intact and we don't have to do extra work. I'm going to take this bolt out so that the parking brake cable will get out of our way. So use a 10 millimeter socket and a ratchet. Loosen this up. Just let that hang right there.

I'm going to use a screw jack and support under this lower control arm. I'm just going to put it back here so then it doesn't slip out. You could put it over here. Or if you have a floor jack, you're going to want to support this. Just take the tension off. Now I'm going to take this bracket off right here. Now this bracket, actually one of the bolts is broken, so there's only one bolt in here. So I have to take that bolt off. I'm going to use a 17 millimeter socket and a breaker bar. Take this bolt out. Hopefully this one doesn't break, although it feels like it's going to break. I'm going to use an air gun. There we go.

All right, so we took that one bolt out and there's where the other bolt is broken. So we're actually going to replace this whole knuckle, and that's why we're replacing it. Now we potentially could drill this out, but a lot of times it takes you a lot of effort, a lot of time. And sometimes it's not worth it because it ends up not being right when you're done anyway. So we'll just replace it.

Now that that's off, you can just twist this bracket out of the way. Just leave that there. Actually going to lower down the control arm. It's nice and loose. The spring is loose in there so it's not going to be dangerous to work on. Should be good. Just going to spray right here. I'm going to spray right here, a little in there, and then these two. There we go. Let those soak. Use a 17 millimeter socket and the air gun.

There we go. You might have to push this down a little bit. Slide that bolt out. Push this up a little bit. Now we can access this nut right here with the extension and an air gun. All right, take this nut out just like that. I'm going to separate this little bar. This has a ball and socket type joint on there. So you can use a ball joint remover or you can use some type of fork or something. So we'll remove that.

Just be careful when you're doing this. Here we go. I got that to break free. With that loose, what I'm going to do now is take this bracket down. I'm not going to take this bolt out here. We'll leave that in there, but we'll take these three bolts out here. I'm just going to use a 17 millimeter socket extension and an air gun. Loosen that one up.

That one out. And then I just want to support this as I take this last one out. All right, got that last bolt out. Now we can just take this whole piece and just slide it off. Now I'm going to take a 22 millimeter socket. Take both these bolts out. Use an air gun. Same on this one. We'll just set this aside just like that. And there's our bracket, or our knuckle.

Now we want to attach the knuckle, the new one, to this trailing arm. So we'll just line this up just like this. Now I'm going to tighten this with the 22 millimeter socket and the gun. If you have the ability to torque this, you're going to want to torque these to 147 foot pounds.

All right, you could put it in a vice and torque it like this, 147. There we go, 147 foot pounds. Now we're just going to take this, slide over the axle. Then we want to make sure we slide this tow bar ball and socket through there, this stud. Get this all lined up. Take the bolts. Trying to get these bolts started right here. Might help if you have a friend holding this while you get the bolt started, or you could even support it on a floor jack. I'll take a 17 millimeter socket and an air gun. I'm just going to snug these up.

Now I'm just going to double check these bolts. Make sure they're tight. I'm just going to use a 17 millimeter socket and a breaker bar. Snug them up. Those are good. Now I'm going to take the nut for this ball stud for that. That's for the tow bar right there, and get that started. So I'm going to take a 17 millimeter socket extension and my air gun. I'm just going to snug this up real quick. Hopefully this stud doesn't spin.

That was good that that didn't spin. Now I'm going to use a 17 millimeter socket and a ratchet and a torque wrench. I'm going to torque this nut to 74 foot pounds. There we go. And if this stud was spinning while you were trying to tighten that down, what you can do is take some big pliers and try to hold these together. That will sometimes prevent the stud from spinning if you do that.

All right, I do want to attach this bolt next. But before I do that, I just want to position the shock in the right position with this bracket. So just get that there. I'm not going to attach that yet. Let's attach this first. I'm going to use a pole jack to raise up the lower control room. It's going to compress the spring a little bit.

So you want to be careful. You don't want to put your fingers through there or anything. We can just take a screwdriver, just pry down on the end. Just get all this to line up. I'm just going to pry this out a little bit. I want to try to angle this if possible. I'm just going to take a thicker screwdriver and try to angle this a little bit. There we go. So try to get it to the right angle that you want. It looks good.

Now I'm going to take a new bolt. It's recommended that you replace the bolt, but if you have to reuse the old one you can. Now I'm going to take a 17 millimeter socket and air gun. Just get that started. What it's recommended is they put all this back together, put the wheel on, and then torque this with a torque wrench when the vehicle is on the ground. But it's very hard to get that correct. So what we're going to do is we're just going to torque it now. Just get the lower control arm as close to ride height as possible. And then you should be good to go.

Now I'm going to torque this bolt with a 17 millimeter socket and a torque wrench to 66 foot pounds. That's good. Now we want to line this shock bracket up. Now if you have to loosen up this nut and bolt, you can to make it a little bit easier. I think I'm just going to raise this up a little bit more. All right, get this lined up. Take one of those bolts with a 17 millimeter socket. Get that started. Get this one started.

Now I'm just going to take an air gun and extension, 17 millimeter socket. Snug these up. Torque wrench, torque these bolts to 59 foot pounds. At this point, you could attach this upper control arm. We're going to do this in a different order. I'm going to put this backing shield on in the breaks and the hub and all that stuff together and then we're going to attach this. But if you're doing this at home, ideally attach this now.

Now I'm going to take this backing plate. Now there's that stud that goes through that hole there. Get that lined up like that. I am going to take the hub, slide that in position. We are replacing the hub. Get that lined up. You could put a little high temp anti seize on some of these components to keep them from rusting up. That's good. Now I'm going to start some of these bolts for the hub. Get those started first. Just use a 14 millimeter socket to help get these bolts on. Get those lined up. Now I'm just going to take a electric ratchet, tighten these up. Now I'm going to torque these to 66 foot pounds with a 14 millimeter socket. For the bottom one, I have to use an extension because you can't really get to it.

The top one, it's a little bit easier to use the extension as well on the front side. There we go. Take the axle nut, reinstall the axle nut. It's a good idea to replace these if you have one, but if not, reuse the old one. Then I'm going to use a 30 millimeter socket, 12 point and an air gun. I'm just going to get this started.

Now I'm going to take that same 30 millimeter socket, torque wrench, and I'm using a pry bar to go in between the studs to prevent the hub from spinning. You can always lower the vehicle and have the pry bar sitting on the ground. There we go, 159 foot pounds. So it's a little bit safer if you go down to the ground and just have this pry bar sitting on the ground and torque it.

Then with that nut, what we want to do is take a punch and just go right here with a punch and a hammer and just peen down the edge of the nut so that it won't loosen up. You just got to mushroom it down a little bit and that should be good. I'm going to reinstall this nut. This nut goes to the backing plate or dust shield. Sometimes you call it a dust shield. Get that started. I'll just take a 22 millimeter socket and a ratchet and tighten it up. Just snug that up. That's good.

I'll reinstall this bracket bolt right here. Take a 10 millimeter socket and a ratchet. Tighten that up. It's snug. Now I'll installed the rotor. And I'm going to take one lug nut and just get that one started just to hold the rotor on and just make it easier to install the brakes. Now let's take the caliper hanger off and reinstall the caliper. Fit the brake pads. Just make sure the brake pads are still in there properly. If not, you're going to have to take this apart. Line that up. Install these bolts, the caliper bolts.

Now I'll take a 17 millimeter socket and a torque wrench and torque those bolts to 65 foot pounds. So I just moved the screw jack out a little bit. If you have your floor jack, you could raise it up from over here. Just be careful. You don't want this to slip off. I'm just going to raise this up so that it's easier to attach the upper control arm. Just pry this over a little bit and pry it down. Get it lined up. All right, that's pretty good. This right here, I'm just going to take a pick. Just try to get this over a little bit.

If you can get it from the back side, it would be better because we're going to send a bolt through this front. Once you can access that on this side, use another pick. I'll just use a straight pick. That's good. Now I just need the bolt. Grab the bolt. Just wiggle this around. There we go. Just get the bolt started. It's a little bit easier. I'm just going to come down a little. There we go. Got the bolt in. At this point, I can lower this. To actually torque this bolt, what you want to do is have the suspension where it would be normally. They recommend putting the tire on and tightening that down now, but that's obviously very difficult. So we're just going to torque it in this position.

Take the nut, get the nut started. We're going to use a 17 millimeter wrench and a 17 millimeter socket and a torque wrench. I'm going to torque this bolt to 66 foot pounds. It's recommended you torque the bolt side and not the nut side on this vehicle. Normally you torque the nuts side. That's good. Now I can lower the rear suspension. All right, take the ABS sensor, or wheel speed sensor. Slide that bracket in there with that. This bracket goes down here. Then you want to feed this wire through here just like that. That bracket's going to go like this. Before we install that into the knuckle, we'll put the nuts on.

Get that one started. Get this one started and the last one. This goes on the backside of this arm right here. Take a 10 millimeter socket and a ratchet. We'll just snug these up. Now take the sensor side and slide it in position on the knuckle. Take the bolt, get that started. Take a 10 millimeter socket and a ratchet and tighten this down. Just snug it up. It's good. Now we can take the lug nut off and put the wheel back on.

Slide the wheel on over the lug studs, and put the lug nuts on. I'm just snugging these up loosely. Then I'm going to lower the vehicle and use a torque wrench to torque these. Torque this using a 21 millimeter socket and a torque wrench. I'm torquing this to 76 foot pounds in a star pattern. The reason I do it in a star pattern is so that the wheel gets tightened down evenly. I'll just go around again just to make sure. Confirm everything's good.

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