Hey guys, chrisfix here and today, i'm gon na show you how to replace your entire front suspension. Everything in the front wheel well, is gon na be replaced. I'm talking about everything. We have lower control arms, all the bushings, the axle, the strut any boots.

We have the hub the bearing all the ball joints, the inner and outer tie rod and the upper control arm. Literally everything from the wheel inwards is gon na get replaced. I already started on the other side. Let me give you an idea what I'm talking about so here are all the old components and here's what its gon na look like.

There is nothing left in here. It's all gon na be brand new and the reason why we're doing this is because all these components have two hundred thousand miles on them: they're old, they're, rusty, they're, worn out and they have to be replaced. Let me show you what I mean driving this car is supposed to be a lot of fun, but it isn't it's scary. You could feel all the play in the suspension.

Steering is not accurate, it's vague it wanders all over the road. Everything feels all loose and worn out. You could just tell that it's no good. Now you saw how bad it drove well.

The next thing you'd want to look for is your tire wear you can see here. The outside edge of the tire is worn out which is due to excessive camera. This is positive camber. If you see the inside wearing out that's a negative camber, but this wear could be due to a bad alignment.

It's just a signal to check out the suspension to make sure it's okay and to check the suspension. What you want to do is you want to grab a pry bar and we're gon na go in here and pry at the front suspension you want to pry around the bushings and make sure they're not worn out there shouldn't be much play. It will deflect a little bit, but this is way too much. I'm not even pulling hard on the pry bar and you can see the whole upper control arm is moving around and that's why the suspension on this car feels so horrible.

Now, that's just me and a pry bar imagine the entire weight of the car on the suspension. There's gon na be a lot more play than that. So all the bushings are bad. All the ball joints are bad.

The bearings bed, basically, all the suspension components, are bad and need to get replaced, so I'm going to replace them all, and the good thing is you guys are going to learn how to replace and rebuild your entire front suspension and we're gon na be doing this At home on, jack stands using common hand tools. Now, as always, I like to start off by putting on some eye protection and all you're gon na need tool. Wise is a breaker bar, some wrenches ratchets and a socket set a pry bar at work. Wrench some pliers and snap ring pliers, screwdrivers and a hammer.

Now I do have an electric impact gun here, just to show you guys that this is a very, very useful tool. It makes your job so much quicker and easier. Now I do understand that everybody has one, but if you're gon na be working on cars, definitely consider investing in one. Since not everybody has one.

I'm gon na stick to using common hand tools, but I will link all the tools here in the description. So you could easily find it now. There are some more specialized tools that you're going to need because we're gon na be pressing out a bearing and ball joints. So we have a ball joint press, we have a slide hammer and we have a bearing press now, since most people don't own these more specialized tools, you can rent them from your local parts store for free and for whatever reason, if you can't find these tools For free, when we get to the point where we remove the knuckle, you could take this to your local shop.

Have them press out the old ball joint and the bearing and press in a new ball joint and bearing it's not going to cost a lot? Then you could come back to your house and continue replacing the rest of your parts. Now speaking about parts, it's very important that you install good parts into your car. You don't want to install junk and then they go bad and you don't have a good ride. Install quality parts, so you want to make sure your parts meet or exceed OEM spec.

It's a good idea to make sure your parts have all the included fasteners in hardware. You don't want to reuse old, rusted fasteners that are bent in order to do the job. A hundred percent you want to make sure you have new fasteners, and I do want to thank meadow tech for supporting the video and sending me out a bunch of suspension components. So I could show you guys how to do this, and with that we are ready to start removing the front suspension.

Now, of course, before you begin any work, you want to make sure your car safely, jacked up and on jack stands. Another thing I like to do is I like to get the tire and slide it underneath just as an extra level of protection, so the car can't completely drop in a worst-case scenario. The next thing I like to do, since all the suspension bolts have been on here for a really long time, they're all rusty, I like to get some penetrating fluid and just spray down all the suspension. Bolts.

I've already done this over the past couple of days, because I knew I was going to do this job. The penetrating fluid is going to help loosen up the rusted nuts and bolts. It's gon na penetrate deep into the threads and lubricate it. So it makes it easier to remove all these fasteners so with every nut and bolt sprayed down with penetrating fluid.

The first thing we want to remove is the axle nut, and this axle nut has a little indentation here that we have to straighten out before we can remove it. So get a little punch and a hammer and just push the rim of the axle nut out of this indentation beautiful now. The idea is that little indented part is stuck inside the axles, so the axle nut can't come out by mistake. So when we install our new axle nut at the end, we're gon na do the same thing: we're gon na indent, the rim into the axle all right.

So now we can remove the axle nut, but the problem is: if we try to loosen it. The axle is just gon na spin, so normally what I'd like to do is I like to put the wheel back on the car and then lower the car down to the ground, so that doesn't spin, but I already did the other side and there's no suspension There so another way to prevent the wheel from spinning is to stick a screwdriver into the cooling vanes on the brake rotor or have someone in the car press the brakes and that'll hold the axle in place, so you could break the axle nut loose. You'll definitely have to use a long, breaker bar to get enough leverage to do this because axle nuts are on there. Tight.

Also don't hurt your back doing this bend from the knees and not from your back with the nut loose. Now we can remove it. The rest of the way by hand good and that's all there is to it and notice how the penetrating fluid soaked into the threads a little bit, which made it easier to remove. Next, we can remove the brake caliper, there's two bolts behind here in order to make it easier to remove just turn the steering wheel, to give you better access to those bolts, and you can see, we have more room to remove the top caliper bolt and the Bottom bolt just loosen that the rest of the way by hand and now the brake caliper is loose, but before we remove it, we want to follow the brake line and remove any fasteners holding the brake line to the knuckle like here and here.

So, let's remove the first ten millimeter fastener, holding the brake line in good and then the second 10 millimeter fastener, which is back here good and with the brake line free. We could remove the caliper so slide a bucket or a block of wood under the wheel. Well, that way, we could remove the caliper and place it on a piece of wood, so there's no pressure on the brake line. Finally, we could get the brake rotor off and that's definitely going to need some hammering only hit it like this.

If you're gon na, replace it perfect and with the rotor loose, let's remove it all right so, with the brakes out of the way now we could remove the hub. The hub is what the wheel bolts to so. In order to remove this, we want to make sure we don't remove any other suspension parts, because we need the suspension to hold the knuckle in as we pull the hub out to pull the hub out. We're gon na be using our slide hammer.

So let's grab the hub, adapter and fit it in place and it figures, because this Honda has such a small hub. The studs aren't fitting in the slots here I could get one in, but I can't get the other. So I have a quick solution. Gon na thread on some lug nuts and then hammer the studs, so i bend them apart since i'm replacing this hub.

I don't care if these studs Bend and look at that perfect now thread on lug nuts to hold the slide hammer adapter in place. Then we can grab the slide hammer thread it onto the adapter and let's remove this hub. So what you do is slide the weight fast to knock the hub outwards. You're, probably gon na have to do this a bunch of times, especially if the hub is original and in this case over 25 years old, and this is putting up a bigger fight than I thought.

I'm not so sure this is gon na remove the hub, and unfortunately, sometimes that happens when you work on cars, your plan doesn't work. It would have made it so much easier just to pull this right out how this works is here's. What the hub looks like. It's nice and smooth this fits into the bearing and the slide hammer pulls it right out in this case it's so rusty and old.

It's not coming out easily, but it's not a huge deal. We're just gon na have to knock out that hub when we remove the entire knuckle all right. So the next thing to do is to remove the knuckle that holds the bearing in so the knuckle is held in by the upper ball joint there by the tie. Rod ball joint right here and by the lower ball joint under here we remove those three ball joints and the entire knuckle will come out.

So, let's start with the upper ball joint. So this is a castle nut and usually castle, nuts have a cotter pin. That goes through them and it's bent around the castle nut, but I think the cotter pin was so rusted. It just fell apart.

So, let's see if we could break this nut, loose beautiful and then loosen it up the rest of the way. Now we're gon na take the same castle, nut flip it upside down and screw it back on to the stud. This is actually a really helpful trick. Screw the castle nut in until the base of the nut is flush with the stud perfect.

Then hammer that upwards to pop the stud out of the knuckle and usually with the ball joint loose. You can't unscrew the nut, because the stud just spins, like you're, seeing here so get all locking pliers and clamp down onto the stud. Now the stud is held in place and we can remove the nut just like that. So with the upper ball joint completely removed.

Now, let's move on to the lower ball joint down here and with this lower ball joint, you can see now we have a cotter pin. So what we're gon na do is we're gon na open up that cotter pin. This is gon na, be really simple and grab on to it and pull it right out. Just like that.

Next, we could break this nut loose and remove it the rest of the way and just like before flip it over and reinstall it. So it's flush with the stud. Now, let's hammer it out. Unfortunately, again things are not working as planned, and this ball joint stud isn't popping out.

So I'm gon na remove this nut. I don't want to get the nut stuck on here and then it makes a bigger problem and you can see the nut was already starting to get deformed. That means we're hitting this so hard. It's not working.

So this gives me the opportunity to show you a specialized tool designed exactly for popping out ball. Joint studs. All you need to do is place the tool over the control arm and slide it under the ball joint stud and tighten it down. So it presses against the stud.

Now you just tighten this until it pops. This is part of a ball joint puller set that could be rented for free from many parts stores. So this is another option I wanted to show you boom. That is all there is to it.

Now we can remove the tool and the ball joint is free from the knuckle. And finally, the last thing to remove to get the knuckle out is the tie. Rod end. So let's bend the cutter, pin open and it's okay to break the cotter pin, because we do need to replace this anyway a lot of times.

It makes it easier to remove like this then break the nut loose and unscrew it the rest of the way again. Flipping the castle nut over and then hitting the nut and stud with a hammer to pop it out then remove the nut and the tie. Rod can be removed and the knuckle is finally free. So now that the entire knuckle is removed, we can remove the ball joint and bearing and that hub that we couldn't get off before.

But before. We do that. Let's finish, removing the rest of the suspension and we might as well continue by working on the inner and outer tie rod. We're gon na keep this as one assembly.

We're just gon na disconnect this right here from the steering rack and the reason why we want to keep this connect is because we'll be able to get a measurement from here to here and when we install the new inner and outer tie rod. We can use that same exact measurement to give us a pretty accurate alignment so to remove this tie. Rod we're gon na need two wrenches and we need access to the inner tie. Rod ball joint right here so slip.

One wrench on to the steering rack to hold it in place and use the other wrench to loosen the inner tie. Rod with that loose. Now we can loosen it the rest of the way by hand good and notice. There's a lock washer at the end here.

I'll show you how to install this on the new tie rod, so the tie rod doesn't come loose while you drive and finally remove that old, broken boot. Alright. So next, let's go and remove the right. The strut comes down and goes into this metal bracket.

Here. Right here there is a pinch bolt holding this in. We want to remove that first before we remove any fasteners. So let's go get that loose there.

We go now it's loosening up and let's remove this bolt the rest of the way by hand beautiful and that's gon na make it so much easier to separate the strut from the metal bracket down here. So the next thing we need to do is remove this bolt, holding the strut into the lower control arm so get a wrench on one side holding the bolt in place as we unscrew the nut with the ratchet, then we can remove the nut all the way And lightly tap the bolt out with the hammer and with that bolt removed. The only thing holding the strut in are two fasteners right on top of the strut tower. So, let's loosen up the first 14 millimeter nut and remove it the rest of the way and let's remove the other nut as well, and once that's off.

We could push the strut down and have to push it somewhere to clear the control arm. Wiggle it a little up and the strut Forks separated from the strut. So that's one last step, okay, and that gives us room to remove the axle. So now we just need to follow the axle all the way to the transmission, so we're coming in from the outside going under the car, and the axle goes right into the transmission right here now you just want to grab a pry bar slide it between the Axle and the transmission, and just pop it out perfect now before you remove the axle completely get something to catch the leaking transmission fluid, because when you remove the axle some fluid might come out, and in this case it looks like nothing's leaking, which is nice.

So there's no mess and we don't have to refill it later on so now, with the axle free, we can remove it completely from the car and we're so close to being done with the disassembly. All that's left is the lower control arm here and the upper control arm there. So let's get that upper control arm out. This is so easy to do it's held in by two fasteners.

So, let's start with breaking this nut free right here and loosen it. The rest of the way by hand now, let's get that other nut removed completely as well good, so with both of these nuts removed. Now we could go back under the car, and this control arm should come right out like that beautiful. So now with that done, we have one more thing we need to do and that is remove this lower control arm.

There is a bolt right here and there's a couple of bolts back here, holding in a bushing, so let's go remove those bolts first and there are three bolts that we need to remove that hold the control arm bushing in place. So, let's break the first one loose, and that was a lot easier to break loose than I thought given how rusty all this is. Next, we can remove the second bolt and finally, we could finish off with removing that last bolt. So with this end completely loose now we have one more bolt we need to remove, and that is right here.

So, let's break this final 17 millimeter bolt free and unscrew it the rest of the way by hand, and then we could wiggle the control arm right out of here. Alright. So with this control arm removed, we have officially removed everything in this wheel. Well - and it wasn't that difficult, it's really that simple.

In most cases, all the fasteners came off pretty easily if they were hard to remove you just use a breaker bar make sure you spray everything down with penetrating fluid, and it's that simple, it's just a bunch of nuts and bolts so out with all the old Suspension parts and in with all the brand new ones, I cannot wait to get these installed. It's gon na make a huge difference from these old rusted parts to the brand-new parts. Now what we need to do is we need to get our knuckle and remove the hub bearing and ball joint I'll show you how to do that off the car, and since we have everything removed, how I'm gon na clean up everything in here, I'm gon na Hose it down and I'm gon na put a fresh coat of paint, so we don't get any rust. It's important to clean the wheel.

Well before you paint to remove all the dirt oils and grease which will prevent the paint from sticking I'm gon na remove the fender liner for some more access and, let's spray down the wheel well with some soapy water, which will act as our degreaser then grab A brush and brush everything down this is gon na agitate all the dirt and make it easier to remove, look at all that dirt, just getting washed away. So, let's finish up with a final rinse and finally, I'm gon na set up a fan right here to dry this off faster. So as we let that dry. That gives us the perfect opportunity to work on our knuckle, so we're gon na go from this.

To this, this is the passenger side. I already did it already replaced everything. It looks great now I did say at the beginning of the video, if you can't get the specialized tools for rent or if you just don't want to tackle this part of the job, you can take your knuckle to a shop. They will press out all the old parts, so they'll press out the hub, the bearing the ball joint and the press in the new parts.

For you sure it's gon na cost you a little bit extra, but it might not be a bad option if you want now, of course, I'm gon na show you right now how to remove everything and replace everything. So, let's get started. The first thing we need to do is get this old, stubborn hub out. Now you saw before slide.

Hammer was not working at all, it's just so rust. Welded in there we're gon na need something with a lot more force. Now we don't have any fancy, presses or anything here. So we're going to be you good old hammer and let me show you how so grab your knuckle, and this hub is gon na come out this way, so we're gon na set this up in the vise.

So this outside ring right here is the bearing this inside ring is the hub just so you get a better idea. You can see this inside ring right here is the hub. We're gon na go, get a sock and place it right there, so we could push the hub only and leave the bearing in place so get a socket that fits right on the hub and, let's hammer this hub out. You're, probably gon na, have to use some pretty good force to get this out.

Considering the slot, hammock didn't work for it beautiful and you can see how much better this work compared to using that slide hammer. This worked a lot quicker and was a lot easier to get it out and now, let's get the bearing out. So the bearing is held in with a snap ring - and this is what prevents the bearing from coming out and the trick with removing old rusty snap rings - is to soak them in penetrating fluid to loosen them up. Now we could grab our snap ring pliers, squeeze them good and that's not budging.

So when your snap ring pliers just aren't strong enough to move that snap ring, because the snap ring is so rust welded in here, a little trick is to get a punching hammer and get that punch in one of the snap ring holes and tap the punch To break the snap ring free from the rust do this to the other side of the snap ring as well and hammer around the flat part of the snap ring again to break that snap ring free from all that rust, that's gripping tight onto it! Now we could go back in there and give that snap ring pliers, a good squeeze and that's working a lot better than before, but it's still stuck so grab a flathead, screwdriver and work. Your way around the snap ring to loosen it up and there we go now, since we removed our snap ring from this side of the bearing. That means the bearing is going to come out this way because the snap ring was preventing it from coming out. So, let's flip over the knuckles, so we can knock this bearing out, then we're gon na get our bearing crest kit and we want to grab a bearing adapter that we think will fit right on the outside of the bearing.

So this right here is the correct. Adapter, you can see the outside edge of the bearing. We want this to fit right on the outside edge, like that there's a little bit of space around the whole thing where this will allow us to push that bearing out, but it won't get caught up. If you use something too small, like this you're gon na only push on this race right here and the bearings gon na get damaged, you're just gon na pop that inside race out and if you use something too big like this you're, not even going to be Hammering the bearing you're gon na be hammering onto the knuckle and that's not going to move the bearing.

So you want to on the right size that fits right in there and now we're gon na just hammer this out for the bearing you're gon na need a decent amount of force to knock this out, just be careful not to hit the knuckle which could damage It I like to use some penetrating fluid to both loosen up the rust and to lubricate the bearings, so it comes out easier and you won't damage the knuckle as its four-step and we're almost there. You can see that bearings about to pop out beautiful and there you go. That is how you remove an old wheel, bearing there's nothing to it, and this one was pretty stuck in there, yet we still managed to pop it out with just a hammer. Next, it's important to use a pic or a thin flat head, screwdriver and clean out the channel.

The snap ring sits in get all that rust out. That's gon na prevent the new snap ring from seating properly into that channel. This is important because this is what prevents your bearing from coming out. So, let's wipe all the loose rust away and see how that snap ring fits perfect.

That snap ring is all the way into the channel and that's exactly what we want to see. Next, let's remove this old rusty break dust shield. I need to try to unscrew these three screws there Phillips heads, but I could tell this - is gon na be hopeless and it is just stripping that screw away I'll have to try the other screw just in case and as you can see, the rust is just Too much but don't worry, I have a super simple trick and that's using a saw. What we want to do is saw a slot into the screw, essentially turning it into a flathead screw instead of a Phillips, then we could use a larger flathead screwdriver and that's what I'm talking about that gave us enough leverage to break that screw free.

So we turned something that was going to be a real pain to remove into something that wasn't difficult at all. You can't beat that now we can apply the same method to the other two screws, good, that's the second one free and again saw a slot and good, that's the third one free. Finally, with all the rusted screws removed, we could remove the dust shield now, let's remove the old, worn out lower ball joint. So we'll start by removing the snap ring use that snap ring pliers to spread that snap ring apart and remove it from the ball joint.

It's also helpful to remove the rubber boot. So let's do that as well. So, with the snap ring removed now we could hammer out the ball joint and just like the bearing we're gon na have to hammer it out on the shoulder of the ball joint, so find the right size socket. That's gon na fit on the shoulder just like that, then use penetrating fluid that help lubricate the ball joint for easier removal and just hammer.

The ball joint out notice, I'm using a black impact socket which could take the abuse of hammering and that's all there is to it. So with that old hub, the bearing and ball joint removed from the knuckle. Now we want to prepare the knuckle to install the new hub bearing and ball joint. What you want to do is you want to look on the inside of the barrel here with the bearing, sits and make sure there's no pieces of metal that are sticking out any burrs or anything from hitting that bearing out that could cause issues.

When you push the new bearing in in this case, this looks nice and smooth same thing with our ball joint here. If you did have any burrs on the edge, what you could do is you get a file and just file those burrs down? So when you push the new bearing or ball joint in, it won't damage it, since this is good, all you want to do is get some 400 grit, sandpaper and lightly sand. The surfaces with a ball joint and bearing slide into the idea is to get them rust, free, smooth and clean, and just give the ball joint and bearing a fresh surface to press into beautiful. So you see how nice and smooth and clean that surface is it's rust, free, that's exactly what we want to see in the bearing spot and in the ball joint spot.

Now for everybody who knows me, this is not going to be going back in looking like this, we'll be painting the knuckles. So I taped off where the bearing and ball joints slide into next use a metal wire brush to remove all the loose dirt and rust from the knuckle. It doesn't have to be a hundred percent rust free because we're gon na be using paint that bonds to the rust, but we definitely need to make sure the loose rust is removed good and that's what we want it to look like. So not only am I going to paint the knuckle, but I'm gon na paint the strut fork end.

I'm gon na paint the entire chassis over here in the wheel. Well, I did move the bumper off to the sides just a couple of Clips. So, let's get started so with the clean and dry surface, I'm starting off with a special silver colored paint that bonds to the rust and it seals the metal surface. So no new rust could form after that dries I'm going over it with a special thick black paint that adds a second barrier against rock chips, break dust, oil and grease.

It's also going to make this wheel. Well, look really nice! I'm gon na follow the same exact steps for the knuckle and strut fork, paint on the silver colored paint and after that dries paint on the thick black paint all right with those parts painted and with our wheel well and chassis, painted. Look at that. Not only does that look good, but that paint barrier is gon na prevent rust.

So now all we need to do is let it dry and 24 hours later. Our paint is completely dry, so we're ready to install our brand-new ball joint and bearing so for this video we've already covered a lot of information. We dis the entire front, worn out suspension from control arms to tie rods, the axle, the strut ball joints and bearings and hubs, and even the brakes we removed it all. So we went from this old worn-out suspension to this completely gutted wheel, well with fresh paint.

So, with all these old parts removed in the next video, I'm gon na show you how to install your entire front suspension, including pressing in the new ball joint bearing and hub that way. Everything's gon na be brand new in our front suspension, we'll get her aligned and see how she drives. So I'm gon na make it really simple for you guys to find that video. So you can see how to install all the suspension parts I'll post a link in the description, and I'm also gon na - have a link right here on the screen.

Just click the screen right there and that'll. Take you to the next video I'm putting the suspension together. Hopefully this video was helpful if it was remember to give it a thumbs up also, if you're not a subscriber, consider, subscribing and hitting that notification bell for more videos. Just like this, and finally, all the tools and products I used in this video are linked in the description, so you could easily find them.

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