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Hey all,
I ran into a difficult problem today when attempting to change my front wheel bearing/hub assemblies on my 2.4L Dodge Stratus. I was able to remove all of the fasteners from the wheel bearing/hub assembly and found that the CVs were not seized in the hub. The problem was, the hubs were so rusted onto the steering knuckle that I couldn’t get the old assemblies removed. I tried heating both bearings with a MAPP torch repeatedly, spraying them liberally with PB plaster,, beating on them with dead blow (4lb) and sledge (10lb), and slide (5lb) hammers. I did all of these things for around 6 hours (after removing all of the fasteners) and they still didn’t break free.
I found that some of the local wrecking yards have knuckle assemblies cheap (around $35 per side). At this point, should I just give up on getting the old ones out and install the new hubs in replacement knuckles (and put those on the car)? I can’t figure out how else to get the hubs off!
Thank you!
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Thank you for the videos, but it doesn’t really help. I disassembled everything down to the hub, removed the hub bolts, and the hub/bearing wouldn’t move! It was just frozen in there with rust!
I put the car back together so I could drive home last night, but I dropped by the salvage yard and picked up a set of steering knuckles ($75 for both). I still need to remove the bearings from these replacements so that I can install the new ones, but it should be easier to heat them up since it’s off of the car. I already got one bearing out without heat, but the other will require some further persuasion.
I’ll keep you all posted.
Ok, I’m making some progress.
I finally got the bad bearing out of my junkyard steering knuckles. Heat didn’t work. Soaking in PB blaster by itself didn’t work either. I didn’t have a shop press, so I had to improvise…
I purchased this puller set. I needed the 8 inch model, but for the price of 1 I could buy a 4 piece set, so that’s what I did:
http://www.amazon.com/TEKTON-5702-Gear-Puller-4-Piece/dp/B000NPUKB6
I soaked the knuckle/bearing assembly in pb blaster for 12 hours before I tried to pull it (I was waiting for my puller to come in the mail, and I used it literally as soon as it showed up on my doorstep). I set it up on the rusty knuckle with a receiver cup from my otc ball joint service set, and spaced one of the arms with a bad lug nut. When it came loose, it exploded with a pretty loud bang:
This is the bearing out of the knuckle:
Now I’m ready to clean up the knuckles and install the new bearings.
But I have a question, the knuckles I received came off of a Chrysler sebring (2002 and 2006 for left and right respectively). The Chrysler parts number on the castings do not match the comparable numbers listed for my car, but the knuckles look identical from what I remember. If they are indeed identical, should I use the junkyard parts? I was told the cars these parts came off of are compatible with mine (suspension-wise), but I dunno if I should trust them on it. Also, should I have my alignment checked after replacing the knuckles?
Thank you!
I can’t answer the compatability issue. I would call a dealer parts dept
and see if the two will indeed work. If they will work then use them.I would
have an alignment done after the work. Great job on getting the bearing out.Ok, half of this repair is done. The entire left front side is finished, and no part of this job was easy.
Yesterday I replaced the steering knuckle (with one from the salvage yard), sway bar link, wheel bearing/hub, and lower control arm/ball joint.
It took so long to get the left side finished that I didn’t have enough daylight to do the other side. The only easy part was lifting/supporting the vehicle and taking off the wheels/loosening the axle nuts. The wheel bearing/hubs were so rusty that they wouldn’t come out of the hub (even with a puller installed on the back once removed from the vehicle). The salvage yard unit was the same exact parts number that was on my car, so I know it was comparable.
Other issues included spun upper ball joint and end link studs, a stripped center to the upper ball joint stud (which required locking vice-grips and heat just to get the nylock nut off), none of my ball joint pullers wanted to fit onto the lower ball joint, and the cotter pin was stuck in the lower ball joint stud (and I had to use an impact to force it off). Also, getting the lower control arms off was a challenge. Thank you Chrysler for not welding nuts onto the sub-frame, so that I have to fish a long 18mm into the top of it right next to brake lines (while impacting the bolt from underneath! And the new control arm was harder to install then it was to remove!
In the end, the bad bearing vibrations and howling is all gone (and the car has never felt more solid. I sprung a little extra $$ for moog problem-solver control arms (which are greasable) and timkin wheel bearings. Safe to say I used a lot of anti-seize when I installed the hub (and used a quality bearing so it hopefully won’t need replacing again!). I didn’t have time to take pictures this time, but I will when I do the other side and post my results!
Thanks for the advice!
Ok, I finally got the right front side fixed yesterday. The highlight of of that ordeal was me breaking one of the two sway bar bracket bolts on that side. Otherwise things went smoothly. Worth noting, replacing all of these parts fixed my front end camber (which is not adjustable and was out of spec on the left side). Replacing the steering knuckles seemed to fix it.
In the process of replacing all of these parts (front sway bar links, lower ball joints/control arms, steering knuckles, etc) I made the upper ball joints very loose. I had to put vicegrips on the stud to keep it from spinning to break the nylock nuts on the studs free. I actually broke a pair of name brand vicegrips doing this yesterday… That said, it looks like I’ll also be replacing front struts, control arms, and ball joints in the near future (Since they need to be pulled as an assembly anyway, might as well replace them all). At least by the end of this I’ll have an almost completely new front end suspension with greasable fittings.
I finally got around to replacing the rear struts. They were the factory units, and were sagging a bit. I was able to snipe a pair of Gabriel quick struts off of amazon on black friday for $55 each, so on they went. The repair was uneventful, until I saw the condition of the shocks when I got them out:
I thought I heard some clunking coming from the rear, but didn’t expect that to be the reason… Good thing I swapped them out!
On a related note, the rear subframe is starting to rust out a little. It’s not all rust holes the size of my fist, but there are small thin spots scattered across the bottom of it (I’ll try to get a picture of it when I change out the lateral links). Since It will continue rusting (I am in the northeast after all), should I remove it at some point in the future and remove the rust/weld the holes or just replace the whole subframe (which can still be bought from the OEM online for around $200)?
Thanks again!
Hey all,
The dodge stratus front suspension replacement continues…
I couldn’t get quick struts for the front, since they have upper control arms/ball joints/lots of other factory only parts dressed on them. Given that I don’t have much daylight in the winter, I decided to get junkyard strut assemblies ($40 a piece), disassemble them for all of the (expensive) reusable parts I needed, and assemble with some new components I ordered. I ordered new moog problem solver upper control arms/ball joints, new moog coil springs, and gabriel struts. Disassembly took longer than it should have, since everything was a little rusty and spring compressors are a little challenging to position when you have to work around a control arm/ball joint getting in your way…
I had typical disassembly issues: spinning studs on the shock stud, frozen bolts, etc. Once I had them broken down, re-assembly wen’t much quicker. I ran into a strange issue with one of the moog control arms though. One of the ball joints was not fully seated in the control arm (the whole thing spun when I tried installing the grease fitting and also rattled in it’s hole). I got out my ball joint press and went to press it back in. I forgot to press on the outside edge of the ball joint, and slightly mashed in the soft center brass disc (what the grease fitting threads into). This made the joint very tight, though hitting the stud with a BFG helped to push it back out. The grease fitting hole was still too small, so I got out my tap and die set to fix that. Then, my entire tap and die set fell out of my tool box drawer and onto the floor… After stepping back for 15 minutes, I picked it all up (didn’t loose any taps/dies), and proceeded to ream out the hole. I eventually got the hole big enough that I could thread the zerk into place.
Fast forward to today. I was able to remove the old strut assemblies pretty quickly. I was still dealing with rusty stuck bolts, but nothing the torch couldn’t handle. I’m glad I decided to use the parts from the junkyard units. The ones on the car were pretty crusty.. Upon getting everything back in the car and getting it back on the ground (and greased up), I found that the ride height rose by around 3 inches or more in the front! It was sagging that much! Also, the steering is much less scary with tight upper ball joints and the handling is much improved. Installation took around 3 hours (on the ground with no lift). Hopefully this is it for front suspension work on this car for a long time!
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