How to replace your 2wd fron Hub

[TA219]

Well i recently determined that i needed to replace the front hub on my 2001 Tahoe and I wasnt able to find much "how to" information on any of the sites that i looked at so i decided that i would do a little write up to give a general idea of what you have to do to replace your hubs.

Hopefully this will give other do-it yourselfers a idea of what you are getting in to and what kind of problems you may run in to along the way.

 

disclaimer: I am no GM tech, and i accept no liability if you do this yourself and a wheel falls off after you are done. If you do not feel comfortable doing these kinds of replairs then please dont attempt them.

 

Ok so you have taken your wheel off and now you are looking at your caliper / rotor

 

1st go ahead and unplug the wire that is snaked up your a-arm, it is to the speed sensor that is built in to your hub

 

unbolt the bracket on the top of the knuckle that holds down the brake line going to your caliper

(i didnt do that 1st but in hind-sight it would have made things a little easier)

 

 

Next unbolt the caliper from the knuckle, there are just two bolts that hold it on

 

 

Now you can slide the caliper off of the rotor, move the caliper to the left of the a-arm and use a zip-tie / wire hanger or whatever and get it out of your way but dont let it just dangle.

take the rotor off and now you have access to the hub

 

 

now you can unbolt the hub from the knuckle, there are only 3 bolts that you need to take out.

 

 

 

At this point your hub is free to come out.... kinda.

Mine didnt want to come out easily and i ended up "tapping" it out with a hammer by hitting the outside edge of the hub from all different sides and angles; it took a little bit of time and a few hard swings but it finally came loose.

 

 

At this point i used sanpaper to clean a little rust from the center of the knuckle, i sprayed a little wd-40 in there and the new hub went in with ease.

 

Now you can just reverse the process and put everything back together again.

 

I would suggest using some kind of lock-tight on the bolts to make sure they dont vibrate loose, also i would suggest using a torque wrench and making sure those bolts are in there tight. I am not sure what the torque specs are but i am sure a tech could probably tell you pretty easily.

I torqued them all to 100lbs (which may have been too much) but i did not want them coming out

[PeterbiltChrome]

I'm impressed and you deserve recognition not only for your efforts, but for your point in the lack of "how to" available. not saying it isn't available but its hard to find unless you get lucky on various websites or you buy a book...

 

Torque specs are important and many charts are around for different grade bolts ....it ain't no erector set because your safety and safety of others is on the line if you guess.