ABS, advancetrac, and 4x4hi light

[MrPulldown]

Done!!!

 

[MrPulldown]

The final installment of this thread.

I returned home from the auto parts store with a slide hammer and hub puller adapter from O'Reillys. Hello old friend. The hub puller did not quite fit the Explorers 5 bolt pattern. I had to clearance some of the casting in order to snug it up. After 5 or so firm wacks, the hub was still firmly set. Took another 10 wacks or so before it began to gap from the knuckle. Another 10 before it was free. This would have never gone with the engineers hammer I was using.

I cleaned up the mating surface and the bore. Once again I popped the upper ball joint and dropped the knuckle in order to gain access to the hub mount bolts and zipped them in with an air ratchet. Then torqued it down. Finished loading the brake calipers and installed. I found a spec saying that the caliper mounting bolts are 150 ft/lbs. Got to maybe 120 or so and it felt like I was going to snap the bolts so I stopped. Read somewhere else that the spec is more like 130. Called the wife down and asked her to help bleed the brakes. I wanted to get as much of the old fluid out as I could. The good ol pump the pedal method works 100x better than the silly one man bleeder. In all I replaced about 24 oz of DOT3.

Running the new ABS line back gave me a little difficultly. There is one clip behind the upper control arm. I took great care not to damage the clip when I removed the old one only to find out that the new hub and abs line came with a replacement clip. Removing the old clip took way too long as it was difficult to access. The old hub/bearing I removed was a timken unit. Not sure if it was OEM or it had been replaced at some point (125K on truck). The new timken bearing however was slightly different. It did not match the knuckle mating surface exactly and some shinny aluminum is exposed.

Wheels on, truck back on the ground, and now it was time to torque down that big ol axle nut. Go to set my wrench to 183, and find out that it only goes up to 150. Click at 150 and then with my finely calibrated arm gave it another 30 with a long breaker bar.

Test drive. Started the truck up and drove around my neighborhood. Was happy that the howling bearing noise was gone. Was pissed that the ABS and traction control issues were not resolved. I had disconnected the battery at one point during the job as I read the "computer" needs to be reset. This would have been at least 24 hours with the battery disconnected and it still did not reset. Oh well mind races on how to chase down this ABS issue. But in the mean time I do some brake bedding. Finally I decide to shut the car off and then restart it. ABS lights go away. I take a victory lap around town, while continuing to bed my brakes.

In total this job took me 3 nights of about 2 hours each. Still need to perform an epic tool clean up. I would say 8 hours total. The cost was about $70 for front brakes, 120 for bearing, and about 5 for brake fluid; under $200. Felt I should have been able to knock it out much faster, but not bad for the first time.

I found the fact that I used all metric sized tools to be weird. The only bolt that was SAE was the negative battery terminal clamp.

Bearing feels good. Brakes work well but feel they could be stronger.

 

[MrPulldown]

I have been driving the EXploder a bit lately. We have had out of town guest and using the "big" 7 seater has been nice (6 of us). Wheel bearing quite. ABS system perfect. And the brakes I have not noticed, which is good since I use to have the stand on the pedal when coming into a stop.

And that V8 continues to purrrr.

 

[Kyle Donahue]

Hey Ya'll,
My name is Kyle. I have been reading this thread and I have a similar issue. I have a 2005 Explorer that while driving will periodically see the ABS, AdvanceTrac, and 4x4Hi indicators come on with the error in the information center to “Check Traction Control System.” In addition, periodically when turning onto or off of an interstate ramp, I will experience a vibration in the steering column. I have replaced, either myself or by a shop, the transmission the first year of ownership and all 4 wheel hubs 4 times in the 3 years I have owned it, and recently had a shop replace one that was covered under their labor warranty. The unpredictability of these issues and the frequency that I have replaced the hubs tells me something else appears to be contributing to the failures, but I have no error codes from OBDii checks relating to my steering/suspension/traction control systems. Any ideas?

 

[MrPulldown]

Hey Ya'll,
My name is Kyle. I have been reading this thread and I have a similar issue. I have a 2005 Explorer that while driving will periodically see the ABS, AdvanceTrac, and 4x4Hi indicators come on with the error in the information center to “Check Traction Control System.” In addition, periodically when turning onto or off of an interstate ramp, I will experience a vibration in the steering column. I have replaced, either myself or by a shop, the transmission the first year of ownership and all 4 wheel hubs 4 times in the 3 years I have owned it, and recently had a shop replace one that was covered under their labor warranty. The unpredictability of these issues and the frequency that I have replaced the hubs tells me something else appears to be contributing to the failures, but I have no error codes from OBDii checks relating to my steering/suspension/traction control systems. Any ideas?

4 hubs, x4 in the last 3 years. Like 16 hubs/bearings in total. I think I would have set fire to the car before I installed 16 hubs.
There was mention that the cheap China hubs are crap. Only get QUALITY China hubs.
Do you have wheel spacers or aftermarket wheels with big offset.
Tires balanced? CV joints good?

 

[kydirtscooter]

Ford now offers a rear bearing and hub kit for the rear which is made in their China facility. Was not happy to see that. But you can still buy just the bearing too which is not Chinese go figure.

If you are going through that many bearings then either something else is gravely wrong, the bearings are garbage, or install is wrong! I got 190,000 out of a set of front and rears but only use Ford parts. I do hear of bearing failure at low mileage but have not been that unlucky so...?

Any bearing is very picky about preload. Rears more than front since you can mess up preload on those way easier.

 

[kydirtscooter]

Almost forgot, beware of certain Timken bearings. Years ago they moved some of their tapered bearings to China and on heavy duty trucks those were always first to come back. For the most part the USA ones have good service life. Moog is the same, we stopped using them completey. Federal needs to put out quality again!

 

[Kyle Donahue]

4 hubs, x4 in the last 3 years. Like 16 hubs/bearings in total. I think I would have set fire to the car before I installed 16 hubs.
There was mention that the cheap China hubs are crap. Only get QUALITY China hubs.
Do you have wheel spacers or aftermarket wheels with big offset.
Tires balanced? CV joints good?

All the hubs use were MOOG or Ford. Tires have been routinely balanced, no spacers or aftermarket offsets, and CV's appear good.

 

[MrPulldown]

All the hubs use were MOOG or Ford. Tires have been routinely balanced, no spacers or aftermarket offsets, and CV's appear good.

The only other thing I can think of is the torque on the axle nut. Assume that you are setting it to the right spec. I recall 2 different numbers floating around. And if you use the higher you can bind the bearing and shorten it's life considerably.

And in other news, I am back to driving the Ex. In fact it is parked about 20 feet from me right now in the parking lot. My wife had let her brother abuse, i mean barrow it for a bit. He barely drove it, parked it on the street, and finally his neighbors gave him a hard time about it. I took possession of it for a bachelor party. Hauled 5 for skiing and 7 for going out. Came in real handy. Had my buddy pick it up for me, and he swapped out his 2019 2-door jeep wrangler. Talk a bunch of **** about trading down for the weekend, but by the end of the trip he was rather fond of the ol Exploder. Now I have a laundry list of maintenance and repairs I need to perform. Oh the joys.

ANy hoo. I recon I'll be gracing this forum more in the next few months. Here is a pic from our after backcountry ski day. Grooms brother buried a soda keg of home brew for our post ski parking lot apre ski.