Hello, John Talley here with partzilla.com. Today we're going to be replacing the front wheel
bearing on our 2012 Honda TRX420--- also known as the Honda Rancher. Now I'm sure you're doing your
pre-ride inspection every time before you take your machine out, and what you're looking for is
to see if there's any play on the front end, which would indicate a wheel bearing failure. This one
is on its way, so we're going to go ahead and dive in and get it replaced. Before we get started,
let's step over to the table and look at the parts that we're going to need to get this project done.
Now I said we were just going to replace the front wheel bearing itself, but if you're
diving that deep into a project, I think it will be a mistake not to go ahead and replace both
the inner and the outer seals, which I ordered, and that's going to be all the parts we're going to
need to pull this off. So let's step over there, get the machine lifted up, then we'll dive into this
project.
All right, let's start by getting the front tire off.
Now the jack I'm using has a really large base, and it lends itself to holding up four
wheelers. Now if you're trying to do this with a regular floor jack? I can't really recommend
that because you've only got one little three or four inch pad and it's probably going to
fall on you, and we don't need that. So if you are using just a regular floor jack, I would suggest
you get a couple of jack stands to get up under the frame to hold it steady, because we will be
pushing and pulling on it pretty hard. And one of the telltale signs of a wheel bearing is when
you've got the machine lifted up-- I probably should have done this with the front tire on--
is this one: actually I can rock it. And that's only about an eighth of an inch, but when you
translate it out to here, that gets to be more like three-eighths to a half an inch, and that's too
much. And that's a very good indication that yes, you need to go ahead and do something about this.
So let's start by getting the cotter pin out of there.
She's trying to be tough. Came over now.
Now let's go ahead and buzz that castle nut off. You can get somebody to hold the
front brakes, that should be enough to hold. it
Yep. Next let's get the shield off. Just a couple of 10 millimeters.
Now you'll notice a little bit of resistance on these, because they actually have blue loctite
on them. Next let's get that caliper. That's just a couple of 12 millimeters.
Just so we've got some room to work, we're going to remove
this upper clamp holding the hose at toward the end of the control arm,
and that should give us enough wiggle room. Now we're going to take it and a zip tie
and just for the time being, attach it to the the shock spring so it'll be held up out of our way.
There we go. Now let's see if it will release the hub. Yeah, no problem, piece of cake. Next we're
going to swing it around so we can get out that cotter pin, and then the nut for our tie rod end.
The cool thing about Honda, they actually give you a couple of slots
where you can hold it still, because of course it's spinning.
What I like to do, especially on these, let's go ahead and put the nut back on there. That'll
lessen the chance of us damaging the threads. Okay, now we're down to a couple more cotter pins,
and then get those castle nuts off, and then our actual steering knuckle should come out of the way.
All right, and the castle nut down low is a 17 millimeter.
What we're gonna do is take the castle nut off and reverse it thread it back on. Let's get the splash
guard out of the way so where I got some room to work. Once you have our 3 five-millimeter Allen...
Now let's see if we can get this ball joint puller up in there far enough to pop this loose.
This is just a standard ball joint remover, you can pick this up at most any auto parts store.
That is a tremendous amount of pressure. It really should have let go. Now let's see if
we can add a little shock to the system. There we go. So yes, you will need one of these. Otherwise
I guess you could go the caveman route put it up on its back end,
get out a really big hammer, and beat the crap out of it. But this is the correct way to do it.
Of course now it's wanting to spin.
There we go, easy.
All I'm doing now is just pushing back down with a pry bar just to re-release it. I mean
it's already popped loose, but it was holding on just a little bit. Now let's go for that second one.
Not a lot of working room here.
There we go. Tell you what, let's see if we can hold that knuckle still-ish with this.
Now this is just like the bottom, we just need to get the cotter pin out of here. There's not
a lot of room to work with, and once you get it, just use the regular wrench-- 17 millimeter--
and break it loose. There shouldn't be a lot of torque on it.
Reverse our castle nut, and we're just creating a little cup here to hold it, hold that tool
on the end. We can get our puller back up in here
to break it loose.
Satisfying sound. Not quite as tough as the bottom one, fortunately.
So let's get our vise, get this knuckle held in there the best we can,
then we're going to pry out the seals. Then we'll take it over to the press,
get that old bearing pressed out after we remove the circlip, and get the new one pressed in.
You can use a screwdriver, but this little Motion Pro tool does a great job with popping them out.
Since we're already there,
let's get that circlip out of the way. Then we'll flip it over get the other seal removed.
Piece of cake. Interesting little tool, makes it easy. Now
let's get it pressed out and get the new one pressed in. We picked out a uh, a driver, another
Motion Pro tool, and we're just going to push it out from this side right here.
Now you just want to make sure that it reaches out-- you want of course inside of the hub
or the knuckle, and then it covers as much of this surface as possible.
So basically pushing it out on the inside of the bearing.
Game over. All right, now what we need to do now is find a cup or a socket that can fit down into here
that'll at least come up this far. That way it'll have a flat surface to push against. And the trick here
is to find a driver that's going to reach out to that outer edge, because when you're
installing a new bearing, you just don't want to press on the inner race. You want to get all the
way out to that outside, and that Motion Pro kit happens to have a 47 millimeter
that will reach out that far. Actually 48 will be a little bit better, but that 47 should do it.
And we're just going to press this in until it stops on that bottom edge.
That's it. So we've got our bearing pressed in. Next let's get in our retaining ring or snap ring...
Yeah, make sure it's clean. We don't want to drive any dirt or anything into that
brand new bearing. All right, then we can push in the seal.
I think that's it that should do it.
Now we do the other side. Now we're just using a cup that reaches out to the outer edge,
and we're going to use it to drive it in.
Looks like it to me. We've got both sides in now, let's go ahead and pack some grease in there.
Love this Yamaha race grease. It does a couple of different things because you actually have
a CV axle that's going to be spinning, and it's going to be spinning on the surface, so we want as
much grease as we can get in there to keep it from wearing out that seal. Because if it wears out, dirt
and what not is going to get into the bearing and you're right back where you started. Let's go ahead
and get our knuckle in position. And actually this is a little bit tricky, because we're right on top
of our CV boot so we more or less have to bring the castle nut in and then bring it up like that.
All right, now to hold everything together we're going to go ahead and put on our steering rod,
and if that joint needs to be replaced on yours, we have a video for that as well. Get our 17 back on.
But now let's go ahead and put on our lower castle nut,
and that's 17 millimeter of course. Now we need to torque both the lower and the upper
to 21 foot pounds. That'll do. Now here's the real trick:
my torque wrench is not going to fit in there, so how do we torque the other one? Let me show you
this little gadget. This attaches to just a regular box end wrench then it has a 3/8ths receptacle there.
And as long as you have this thing at 90 degrees like this, you can go ahead and torque it.
Reach in there.
There we go, now...
There you go.
Cool little device. Now remember we need to get in
our cotter pins, and if they don't quite line up, I have to put a little bit more on it.
All right, that should hold it. Let's get our one on the bottom next.
Okay, one more cotter pin-- it's actually a retention pin-- on the
steering.
And don't forget to get your splash guard back on.
And if you didn't remember just five millimeter Allen. Now it's time to get our hub back on,
but let's add a little bit more grease down into the splines, as well as on the outer
surface. Careful not to get any on the actual brake disc, because that would have a negative effect.
Okay, and we're just going to put this on just hand tight for the time being, then we'll come back
and torque it. So there's a couple of different ways we can do this. I can use a pry bar trick
in here to hold the hub still, and I think that's the way I want to go.
But don't put it against the threads. We want to go ahead and put two of the nuts on and
actually put them on in reverse. That way it's got this edge to hold it in.
The other way is to put the brake caliper back on, have somebody hold the brakes, and then try
to torque it. That isn't always enough to hold it still. This will definitely hold it still.
We're going to take this one to 58
foot-pounds. That'll do.
Get our cotter pin back in, see if we've got it lined up.
Next let's cut our zip tie loose and get our caliper back on.
And if your brake pads are worn out, we have a video showing you how to replace those as well.
And we're taking those to 22 foot-pounds.
Get this upper mount in there. Our clamp...
Next let's get this little guard back in place.
When it was put together had a little bit of blue loctite on the end of these,
so we're just going to add some back on there. All right guys, we're almost done,
only thing we have left is just the front tire. We're going to torque those to 47 foot pounds.
Let's get them to seat first.
All right, now 47 coming up.
All right guys, that's gonna wrap this one up. 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. Have any questions
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