Hello, John Talley here with Partzilla.com. Today we're going to be
focused in on replacing the front wheel bearings on our 2011 Polaris Ranger 800
Crew. How do you know yours really need to be replaced? Well, I'll show you in
just a couple of minutes. Once we bring up the front end the front, left and
right tires act like they're omnidirectional, so they're in pretty bad
shape. And this is going to be fairly involved to get to-- I mean we're gonna
have to pull the front wheel which is no big deal,
release the brake system, and then get to the control arms to where we can get
that hub out. Then we can get the bearing pressed out in the new one pressed in.
Speaking of bearings, let's go look at the part number that we're gonna need to
do this. As I mentioned, there's only one part number for the left and the right,
and we're gonna go ahead and do both sides because believe me, this machine
needs it. Now the other piece that you want to get on order is the retaining
circlip. You're going to go through this much work, you do not want to chance that
circlip, the old one, actually popping out and then having that bearing work its
way out through the hub. Now as far as the special tools? You're gonna need to
get a good bearing driver set as well as-- you need access to a press to get this
done. The other thing you want to make sure that you have or a good pair of
jack stands. Because you don't want to trust the weight of this vehicle
balancing on just a regular jack. Now as far as any other tools, I will just call
those out as we go along so that'll reduce your trips running to and from
the toolbox. Well, now that we've got our parts and our tools ready to go, let's
get this thing knocked out.
Before we lift it up, let's go ahead and break the lug nuts loose. On this
particular unit, these are aftermarket rims so my my lug size is gonna be a
little bit different than yours. But, nonetheless, let's go ahead and get these
things broken loose then we'll lift it up. When you're placing your jack stands,
make sure that they're actually going under the frame itself. You don't want to have
one come through your floorboard. Before we take the wheel off, this is what I
wanted you to see: just how bad this thing was handling. I mean, look at that.
Gee, think we've got some worn components in there? Imean, what a mess.
Now that we know what the problem is, let's get that wheel off and get this
thing straightened out. I want you to take a look at this. There's a whole lot
of play and the majority of it is on the bearing that we're about to replace. Now
there are other components that are worn as well, but we're gonna address those in
a different video. So if you need help with that,
why don't you reference this unit's playlist and I can walk you through how to take
care of those. Now to remove the caliper and the bracket as an assembly, just need
a 15 millimeter. What we're gonna do is pull this loose and I'll use a bungee
cord or a zip tie and just hold it up out of the way because I don't want it
dangling down off of the brake line. And at this point, leave the control arm
bolts as well as the the steering knuckle-- leave those attached because we
want this to stay as stationary as possible when we go to pull off this end
cap and then the nut on the inside, which is actually on the end of the the half
shaft, the drive shaft that goes all the way through it. Or CV shaft if if you
will. Now it looks like somebody's already worked on this one once because
I know from Polaris that is not the way they bend their cotter pins. So
somebody's been in here before. That being said, be careful if yours has
been messed with because if you take it apart a certain way,
you're gonna remember it. And you may be remembering it the wrong way.
Now if yours has been tampered with and you're not sure that they put it back
correctly, you may want to verify it, and the best place to do that is to look at
our exploded diagrams. That gives you a picture of what all is supposed to be in
there. And look at it part by part, nut bolt, washer, to make sure that they
actually put everything back in there that should be there. That's what I'm
gonna be doing. I probably should have mentioned this before we pull the brake
calipers off. I have an impact. if you do not, and you need to break this loose,
what you can do is actually put the tire back on and knock out that center cap on
your wheel. That way you can get in there with the vehicle sitting on the ground
and break it loose. But we're already in the air, I have one of these, so
it should just buzz right off. That was real easy and I'm betting that wasn't
anywhere close to what torque should be on there. I know enough about electrical
work to know that this is a three quarter inch EMT conduit lock nut. I'm
pretty sure that Polaris did not use this when they put it together. Why in
the world they did this I, I can't even fathom. Here's my theory at this point.
Guys, I think somebody replaced the half shaft of the entire unit and they picked
the wrong one. Oh you poor thing. Let's-- here's what we're gonna do next. Good
grief. Let's go ahead and pull the the steering
arm. Now typically, there would be a cotter pin that goes through this point
right here. Well it's not there. No big deal. But what you have is a 15
millimeter nut down here and a 13 up top. Generally when I pull these apart, or
anything for that matter, if there are washers and nuts and bolts
I'll usually put them back together the way they came off. That way I'm not
searching for them when it comes time to reassemble it. Now all we
need to do is just remove this upper and lower through bolts that are actually
pinching down on the control arm ball joints.
It's just 13 on either side. Now we should be able to push it down enough or
at least from the top. Now let's get the bottom. Gee, I wonder if that bearing had a
problem. Well now that we've got everything apart, let's start looking at
what's going wrong. Now what they did have is this washer and of course that
EMT piece. And this washer actually should be beveled and more importantly
there should be two of them. So this should have kind of a slope to them. So
that's that's the biggest problem we have right now. But while we've got it
apart, let's see how much damage it really did because it didn't tighten
down on the axle, if you want to call it that, correctly. We want to make sure the
hub it's not been damaged. This is your race. It should be going here, and I'd say
that's a fair amount of play. I mean, that is way too much clearance. So the
question is, is it the chicken or the egg? Is it the bearing or is the hub
worn down to the point where the new bearing is not going to tighten down
like it should? Let's just take a quick look with a new
bearing that's gonna be going in. Alright, look at that.
Alright that is a brand-new bearing and I'm rocking it easily a quarter inch.
So this hub is gonna be junk because all of this was caused by not having the
correct cone washers on the outside and getting it torqued. So like I said, if you
don't do it right, you end up paying the price later in life. So we know that the
hub is damaged, the bearing is trashed, and chances are this CV end is going to
be wallowed out as well. Because they were all supposed to be tightened down and
working together. Well guess what? They weren't tightened down correctly and now
they're all worn out and they all have to be replaced. So that means I have to
head back to my office and order a few more parts.
Once everything comes in, within a day or so, then we'll go put it back together.
Now this is why it pays to go to an authorized oem distributor for your parts.
Otherwise you're wasting your time and more importantly, your money.
Let's get the circlip removed and then we can get that bearing pushed out and
get the new one pushed in. And now all I'm using is just a regular press and
then I'm gonna have a cup that reaches out past this inner edge but not past
the outer edge. And that's going to give an area for the bearing to get pushed
down into. And then on the press side, we just have a puck that fits down inside
of the hub, makes contact with the bearing, is gonna be able to push it
through. There we go. It's always that first time when it finally breaks it
loose you're here it go "pop," then the battle is over. See all I'm gonna do
right now is just spend a little bit of time, finish cleaning up the hub, then
we're gonna get the new bearing, put a light coating of red Loctite inside of
it, then press the new one in. We're using a little bit larger bearing driver
because the other one only got to the the inner race. We need to go out to the
outer race but not past it. So make sure you're somewhere in this range like I'm
using right here. We're gonna use the same cup on the backside just to keep
things level. But I did have to drop down the press a little bit so I could get
more working room. Try to make sure that you're doing this as level as possible
so it doesn't try to walk one way or the other. Because if it does that, you're
gonna run into problems. That's feeling right. There we go. Okay, she's
bottomed, and now we can release.
Now you could probably reuse your circlip, but I'm not going to. Now when
they manufacture these, they actually press them out so that bottom edge is
going to be a little bit sharper than the top. So just kind of feel it to see
which one feels more square so to speak. That's the one we want facing out. Let's
go ahead and get it in place. Now I realize what started off as just a
simple bearing replacement has morphed into, you know, several other parts that
had to be replaced. One of which is going to be this outer hub, because as you
recall you could take this bearing just rock it on there back and forth.
It was completely worn out. With the new one, I mean it's a tight-- tighter-- fit now.
But to replace the hub we need to transfer over the rotor and then we also
need to install our studs. Now it looks like someone has maybe attempted to
remove this rotor before because that one is scarred up. So that may be a
problem child for us. The other ones look okay.
But I want to forewarn you: from the factory these bolts have red Loctite on
there, so this is going to be a little bit difficult to break loose. What I
would suggest you do is use an impact-- not an air impact-- with all these hand
impacts to at least jar it loose before we actually put the ratchet on there and
see if we can remove it. That was the easy one. Let's go ahead and go for that
one that's a little scarred up. Let's see what happens. What we're gonna do is
drive it in with the hammer and then hit it with that impact. And when you're
doing this you want to have a little bit of counter rotation on it with just your
hands. You don't have one of these, you need to go pick one up. It will get you
out a lot of trouble. Yep, we got lucky but we are going to replace these.
We'll set that to the side because we can't just transfer it over because
we're missing something aren't we? Studs. Now you could probably knock these
other ones out and reinstall them. I don't want to do that. So I'm just going
to install new ones. There's a couple of different ways you can do this. We can
press them in or we can just put a small socket under the edge or some type of
cylinder for it to go through and just knock them in by hand. I think I'm going
to go that route. Now all we need to do is get this bolted back down and we're
gonna torque them to 18 foot pounds. There's no need to apply any Loctite
because they actually already applied it at the factory. They are bottomed out and
now we are going to attempt to hold this thing still and torque them to 18 foot
pounds. That's it. Let's get this thing mounted back up. When we started this, we
were going to do just the wheel bearing but it didn't turn out that way. This
turned into a wheel bearing, and then it turned into that outer hub, and now it's
turning into a CV joint as well-- or CV axle if you will. So we're gonna go ahead
and put a new one in. We're gonna put a little bit of grease on the end of this,
pop it in, then we can bring the hub over and get it mounted back up. Polaris
recommends that you put in some anti-seize on these threads. I've always
found it easier just use a high temp grease and that's what I'm going with.
Simple enough. While we've got it out and it's clear, let's put some grease on the
output shaft splines. We've got our steering knuckle ready to go with our
new bearing, let's get it mounted back up. When you're putting in these bolts,
there's a groove that it has to go into so you may need to adjust it up or down
to find that groove. Because if you're too far down, it doesn't want to go. See?
So bring it up, find that that notch right here, and that's where the bolt
will slide past. One down. Same scenario. Find that groove. Pop it in.
13 on either side. We'll go ahead and bring these in with just a regular
ratchet and then we'll bring over the torque wrench and put 23 foot pounds on
them, both the top and the bottom. Let's go ahead and mount the steering arm. Just
the whole thing still as we put this together. Go ahead and get our shock back in
place. And I realize that this bushing is damaged, but that is a topic for another
video. I'm gonna bring these in and then torque
them down to 30 foot pounds. Now let's get our hub on. I'm putting grease around
the outside of the hub as well as down into the splined area. Now we already
greased our new CV shaft, but a little bit more won't hurt in here. Because if
you don't do this, and there may come a time when you need to pull this back off.
It could be a torn CV boot or you put enough miles on it to wear it out again,
and there's not grease in here? Well guess what it is gonna get in there?
Water. Then it's gonna rust and you're gonna have a whole lot of fun trying to
pry these two apart. Now this is what the washers are supposed to look like. I
don't know if you can tell, but they have a bevel to them. They're actually two of
them. I'm gonna get them in place and then we are going to torque it to 80
foot pounds. When I say "it" I mean this castle nut. There's a couple of different
ways you can do this. One, I could put the brakes on, have somebody hold the brakes,
that might do it. Sometimes it will, sometimes it won't.
I've seen them where they actually slipped. Second, we could wait until we
put everything together. You leave the center cap off on your tire, drop the
unit down, then torque it. We are gonna try something a little bit slicker I
think. What we are going to do is use this punch going through the rotor into
our mount. But what I don't want to have happen
is that it damaged the threads when we torque it. So we're gonna do put a few
wraps of electrical tape right where this part's going into those threads to
cushion it. Bet you haven't seen that one before, huh? There you go.
Okay, next let me show you how Polaris usually does their cotter pins. They put
the long side on the inside, drop it in, and then they just bend both of them up
together like that. Okay, next we're gonna put the caliper back on and we'll go
ahead and get it on the rotor, maybe get our bolts started. Let's dial
our torque wrench back down to 30 foot-pounds. Now we just need to go in
and torque down the tie rod end bolt up to 40. The top of the actual bolt is a 13
millimeter, and the nut is a 15. And then there's actually a cotter pin as a
safety precaution that goes in at the very bottom. Which this one didn't have
when we took it apart, but it's going to when it leaves. There we go. Look at the
difference now. Can't move that at all. So all of those warn parts added up to a
whole lot of play and all these new parts at the correct torque and this
thing's gonna handle like it's supposed to do. Alright guys this is gonna wrap up
this video, but as you can tell I still have some more work to do. Now if you
have an aluminum wheel, torque it to 30. If you have a steel wheel, take it to 35.
And I still have to put the bumper assembly back on, but I have a little bit
more work to do on the other side so I don't want to just take it back off. Well
listen, if you need any parts for your machine, why don't you come see us at
partzilla.com and we can get you taken care of. If you like what you see, why
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up with whatever I'm working on next. We just want to say thank you for shopping
here with us at partzilla.com, and we will see you in the next video.
Y'all have a great day.