How to Change a Wheel Hub Assembly/Wheel Bearing

Video Transcript:

Hey, guys, this is Victor here from Orange Autos.

I wanted to give you a

look at my 1998 Jeep Cherokee Limited (XJ)

I got this Jeep from a friend of mine.

He stopped by my house one day and

said, hey, I don't need the Jeep anymore.

You can have it.

It had been sitting for a year, and I

grabbed it now to give you a little backstory.

It's a mess.

Just warning you now.

Leather interior, full time and

part time four wheel drive.

It's a really nice little Jeep.

But I had purchased this vehicle about four and

a half years ago for my father in law.

He needed something that he could drive, go all over

the place with, not really worried about the miles and

if something went wrong, we could fix it quite quickly

and get him back on the road.

So this is what we had picked up for him.

After about a few months, my mother in law

wasn't happy with the fact that he had it.

She wanted him to have something newer.

So we ended up selling it to a friend

of mine, and he ended up replacing the motor

and replaced pretty much everything in this thing.

He had it as a backup vehicle.

He drove it, I want to say, a year or two.

Anyway, he left it sit for a

year because he didn't need it.

And he came by my house one day, like I

said, and he said, hey, you can have the Jeep.

I'm moving, and I don't need it anymore.

And DA DA DA DA.

So I ended up taking the jeep.

I've been driving it for a while now.

I upgraded the brakes to drilled and slotted rotors.

The one problem with this is that the

lug nuts keep getting stuck on there.

This is like the third time I've

had to cut the rim off.

So what I did is I went and got new lug nuts, studs,

and I'm going to put them on today while I'm at it.

But I'm also going to change the wheel bearings in it.

I have a four and a half inch lift

for this, which is still in a box.

And I went on Amazon and I picked up

a set of rims, because, like I said, I

was having problems with the rims that were on.

Here the stock one.

So I'm going to pull these out.

I am sorry if I have you all over the place.

So I picked up a set of four of these for $300.

All right, everybody.

So what we have here is a 1998 Jeep Cherokee XJ Limited.

And what I am about to do is change

the wheel bearings on the front of the Jeep.

I would have recorded taking the wheel off, but that was

like a two hour job of getting it cut off.

The lug nuts got stuck on there.

Okay, so that's what I had to go through here's.

Part of the lug nut that I had to force off of there.

I ordered new studs, new lug nuts.

This is not a real hard job to do, but when the

wheel gets stuck on there, it's time consuming (pardon the mess).

So first thing we're going to do is we're

going to remove the caliper from the brake system

so that we can access behind the rotor.

Here, let me take you out.

Basically take and put a new hub assembly on.

Okay.

I like this because it just bolts in.

I am happy about that.

I do not like press fitted bearings just

because I don't want to do the work.

Because if they're not pressed right, you could have

a problem and I don't want to have that.

So I'd rather just bolt them on, let somebody

else press them and I'm good to go.

So we're going to remove the brake caliper.

And yes, I have loosened these.

They're not hard, I just had them off not too long ago.

So take out the two caliper bolts.

Now I am lucky.

I have this right here where I can

just set this here and let it sit.

I can set it right here so that I don't

have to let it dangle by the brake line.

So then we're going to remove the rotor. what I am going to do I am going to spray some WD40 or PB blaster all around

and i'm also going to smack out the studs

Because I have new studs, I should just

get it down, get a bungie cord.

All right, now let me see.

So what I'm going to do is spray these bolts

because I know they've been here for a minute.

All right.

So this bolt, this bolt, and this bolt have to

come off and they are sitting here, here.

And there's another one on the

other side just like this.

It is a half inch wrench.

Let me show you something before.

If you see, these, these are craftman wrenches that I have.

I bought these many years ago.

And they're not like a regular wrench.

They have a different shape on the inside and you

can get most different types of bolts off with it.

So that's why with a regular wrench I wouldn't

try smacking on the wrench like that because it

could slip off round the bolt out.

Then you're in trouble.

As you can see, these look like twelve point bolts.

I am going to see if I have … (no that's probably not going to work)

have them moving nice now, it'll be a little easier.

One of the things I like to do, guys, is if I see

the threads like here are al gooked up, I get a wire brush

and I just try to clean them off a little bit.

It helps the bolt when it's coming out,

not to get stuck or break in there.

Because if it breaks in there, we

have other problems on our hands.

I also have a rough country four and a half inch

lift for this jeep that I haven't put on yet.

We need to get it put on before winter comes.

Here we go.

One of the other things you

can do is get another wrench.

Hook it like this, hook it like this.

And then you get a little more leverage.

I'm going to have to stand for this one.

All right.

So guys, as you can see, I have the new one on.

I have the bolts in, they're tightened down. Alright.

Now when I go to put the axle

nut back on, this axle nut is 36.

I don't use an impact.

Okay, don't do it.

I've always been taught never to do

it, so I have never done it.

I will use it to get it off, but

I won't use it to put it on.

So I get it braced in there.

I hold it, however, because you're going to tighten

it and you can't put a lot of force

like this so you can't over tighten it.

And then I get it tight.

I do that.

And we have the little spring.

It's a washer that kind of springs back

to hold the cap over the axle nut

So I put it in there.

(this thing doesn't wanna…)

So it's in there, I push it

back, push the cotter pin in.

I will take a hammer and just tap it

Now I'll move this a little bit

Normally I would say to get a

new cotter pin and put in there.

This one is actually still really good.

If you don't feel comfortable, just put a new one in.

I'm comfortable because I know that it's a newer one

because I put it on not too long ago.

All right, so what I do is once I get

it through, I take a flathead, I separate it.

Then I take my needle nose, I grab it

spread it and twist it back.

Grab the other one.

This is the shorter side, so it's a little harder.

And then what I will do is take the hammer

and I'm not beating it, I'm not killing it.

It's pretty easy to bend.

And that's it, guys, your axle nuts back on.

You don't have to worry about it.

All right, now rotor goes on,

I'm going to have to get my brake pad spreader and spread this out

so that I can get it back on the rotor.

But put your caliper back on, put your

wheel back on and the job is done.

I will come back when I'm finished and show you.

But to put a wheel hub on a car is not that hard.

There are some that are press fitted.

They can be a little more challenging.

But if you pick up a car pretty cheap

and you know, that's one of the issues.

That's something that is cheap that can be

fixed, I think, for this wheel hub.

This is the old one.

But the new one that I had

gotten, I think it cost me $40.

$50.

Okay, that's not bad at all, guys.

You can go grab these things pretty cheaply.

And when you are hearing noise coming from upfront, one of

the things you can do is put it up on a

jack stand or a jack and put a stand under it.

Always put a stand under it.

But shake the tire like this and like this.

Grab the whole tire while it's still on and move it.

If the tire moves like this, okay, you have

a wheel bearing issue or a wheel hub issue.

So you need to go ahead and change that because if it

gets really bad I did one a couple of months ago.

It was really bad and I had to really work to

get it out because it had split inside the axle tube.

It was terrible.

It was a pain in the butt.

But anyway, guys, like I said, it's

a cheap thing that you can do.

It doesn't cost a lot.

If you can take bolts out of something, you can do it.

There's a couple of different ways to get it done.

I would suggest this is my impact.

No, I'm not sponsored by DeWalt,

but this thing is really good.

I would also get a stubby because the length

of this stops me from getting into places sometimes.

So what I like to do is have a stubby.

Now, I don't have one right now.

And the little one that I do have is Impact.

That doesn't have enough impact.

It doesn't have enough torque to

actually get anything real heavy duty.

So I would suggest getting one of those

small impacts and get one of these.

One of the greatest purchases you can make.

You can usually find these on Marketplace.

People have their tools that they're selling

and get a brand name, though.

You gettin the cheap ones, they're going to break after

a couple of hard uses and you're going to hate life.

Take the time, save the money.

If you need to save the money and get

a good one, put it on, register it, whatever.

If you got to buy a used one, buy it. a lot of times.

There's a lot of videos where if this

breaks down, you can buy the parts.

This one right here comes apart.

So if it's not in warranty anymore, listen, take

it apart, see if you can fix it.

What's the worst that's going to happen?

You have to buy another one.

Well, you're already going to have

to do that if it's broke.

So try to fix it.

Figure out how it works.

I might do a video where I know

I have at least one old drill.

Maybe we'll take it apart and see how it works

and see if we can get it running better.

But anyway, guys, let me go ahead and get

this done and I'll be right back with you.

All right, guys, so this is it. Back together.

Now, some of you may have noticed that I

did not put to brake dust shield back on.

I did not this is not my I mean, I

do drive it, but it's not my goto vehicle.

This is a toy of sorts.

I plan on taking it offroading, so if it

gets beat up, I'm not really stressed about it.

And I didn't put these back on because,

as you can see, these are probably original.

These are all yucky.

All right, look, this is breaking apart, all right?

So I'm not going to put this back on for what?

So it can get caught up in there or something?

No, I'm good.

So what I will do is leave this off, and

I plan on, like I said, doing some stuff.

I haven't decided if I'm going to do

an axle upgrade or a front end upgrade.

So I'll deal with it when the time is right.

Right now, I just wanted to get the wheel

bearing so I didn't have a problem with that.

And I have a lift to put on here, so

figure if I'm here, I might as well do it.

So I want to see how the wheel bearing if

that takes care of my issue, which it should.

But now all I got to do is put the tire back on.

But you can see the brakes are back together.

Everything's in here now that'll all tighten up

once I put the tire back on.

All right, I believe that's everything.

Like I said, make sure you tighten everything up.

Follow your torque specs.

You don't want to not torque

something and the bolt come out.

I've been working on cars for a long time, and

I was talking about earlier the brackets that are bracketed

to the car by bolts, the caliper brackets.

Anybody who's worked on the car and told you that

they have never had one of those come out, I'm

here to tell you they're lying, all right?

So you have to just go by your torque specs.

If they didn't use torque specs and they tell you

if they've never had one come out, they're lying.

And I have no problem with having

a conversation with any one of them.

Use your torque specs.

Make sure those bolts don't come out.

You don't want to have something happen or

destroy somebody's car because you didn't want to

take five extra seconds to go.

Grab a torque wrench, put the right

specs in, and torque it down.

It's not that hard, guys.

So anyway, once I put the tire on, I'm good to go.

So I hope you enjoyed today's Video.

Men and women, this is stuff that we can

all do that's not going to hurt the pocket

as far as taking it to a shop.

I had a friend of mine bring a

car over that needed some work done.

The caliper was sticking, so it needed caliper pads.

You might as well do pads, rotors and

the rubber brake lines you know, these right here.

All right?

So sometimes what happens is these start to collapse

on themselves, and you start feeling brake issues.

So they wanted to do rotors pads, caliper, and hoses,

and to change the compressor on the AC system.

A shop quoted them $4,000.

$1,000 to do the front of the

brakes and 3000 to change the AC compressor.

The quote was $4,000.

That's ridiculous.

I replaced the AC compressor and I mean, yeah,

my labor, but it sure wouldn't have been $3,000.

Honestly, I probably would have done all

this and all that for $1,000.

And when I tell you, changing the AC compressor

in that car was not hard at all, I

could see if it was a lot harder.

But the AC compressor was right

at the top of the motor.

It was a subaru impreza, so everything was right there.

It's not hard to do.

Anyway, guys, this stuff, it's not that hard. I know.

I was so afraid to do certain things.

I remember when I went to school for auto

mechanics, and when it came to the transmission part,

man, I wanted nothing to do with it.

I was so afraid of transmissions.

And now today, I can rebuild transmissions.

And honestly, it was all from a friend of mine.

He owns his own shop, and I asked him for help.

I said, listen, man, I'm willing to get my hands

dirty and learn, but I got to do this.

I don't have the money to buy a new transmission.

He says, all right, get your rebuild kit.

Come on down, I'll do it, and

I'll show you how to do it.

That was the trick.

When I went down there, he had me do everything,

which is great, because I learned how to do it.

So, guys, a lot of this stuff is real easy.

So, like, comment subscribe, you got any

questions, go in to hit the notification bell.

Share it with your friends.

It helps me out.

It helps the video out.

It helps me out by the more videos I

get out, the more people I can help.

And that's what I really want to do.

I want to be able to help people so they

don't have to go to a shop and get ran

over by the prices that these guys are throwing out

because somebody's trying to make a quick buck.

You don't have to be a master mechanic to learn.

You can become a master mechanic if you choose to, but

you can choose to fix your car so that you can

save money for the things that are really important, spending time

with your family and your kids and stuff like that.

Anyway, guys, so thank you for watching.

We'll have some more content like this, and

tell me what you want to see.

Tell me what cars you want to see me work on.

I have a few other cars

that you'll probably see the video.

I don't know before or after this, I don't know yet.

But I'm going to introduce the cars that I have.

If there's a specific car you'd like to see

worked on, let me know, because if I have

a few friends, we all have cars.

Maybe it's something that I can get my hands on

and do to show you how to do it.

If there's something you want a better video done on, tell

me you want to see a better video on it.

I'll do my best to give you the best that I can.

All right, guys, thanks again.

Come back and see us next week.

We'll see what we're doing then.

Have a good one, guys.

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Automotive Glossary

The term "fully loaded" is a bit of a misnomer when it comes to modern cars. In the 70s and 80s, most cars didn't come with all of cool upgrades. A fully loaded car referred to a car that had all of the available options and features.

However, these days, most cars come standard with many of the features that were once considered luxury items. This means that the term "fully loaded" is essentially meaningless if you're on a new car lot. If you're flipping cars, however, this is a good thing.

If you're in the market for a new car, don't be swayed by a salesperson who tries to tell you that a particular model is fully loaded. Instead, take the time to research the features that are important to you and make sure that the car you choose has everything you want.

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